Your Oasis  - Kingsgate Shopping Centre

The Community Hub within the Kingsgate Shopping Centre, known locally as ‘Your Oasis’, is a key community resource within the Dunfermline community and is open to everyone.  It is operated in partnership with volunteers from six other churches and has operated under the sponsorship of Kingsgate Management Team since May 2009.

Our primary purposes in organising the provision of Your Oasis are five-fold; it is:

• A place ‘to be’ and to relax
• A place for ‘critical conversations’
• A place from which to signpost for help
• A place to access the ‘hard to reach’
• A place to showcase community activity

We work on building resilience to enable people to recover from low mental wellbeing and the disabling effects of discrimination and stigma.  Our primary function is to act as the ‘significant other’ in someone’s life, providing a befriending facility, in addition to a consistent and supportive listening ear to assist with:

• self-determination
• hope
• confiding relationships
• access to social networks
• having meaningful activity and roles
• financial security
• feeling safe

Our work is not just about working with the individual but also with community groups and support services that further enable individual recovery, thereby actively working to build socially inclusive 'accepting communities' (Dunn, 1999) and an infrastructure which enables people to participate fully as citizens in today’s society.

‘Your Oasis’ acknowledges that core to supporting people who are at risk of, or experience low mental wellbeing is working to close the opportunity gap, which includes:

• Consideration of the impact of community regeneration or development on economic inclusion or exclusion of people with mental health problems
• Access to, and retention of, employment
• Access to education and training
• Improving awareness among public and private sector employers and providers of goods and services of the rights of people with mental illness under the Disability Discrimination Act
• Improving awareness among people with 'clinically recognised' mental health problems of their rights under the Disability Discrimination Act.

We play a significant role in supporting people close this opportunity gap through our direct work and also our role as a ‘signpost’ organisation, facilitating access to a range of organisations who are equipped to provide specialist resources and support and wider community networks.   Another key function is to provide a base for the ‘hard to reach’ to access services and also a ‘showcase venue’.   A range of organisations use the facilities to meet with client groups or to promote their services.  These have included the following: