Counsellors working with distressed children whose parents are getting divorced have been awarded nearly £379,000 to fund a three-year project.

Surrey Family and Mediation Services (SFMS), based in Epsom, has secured lottery funding to keep working with children aged five to 13 years old from broken families.

Over the next three years it hopes to reach about 2,000 children, parents, teachers and home school link workers.

Director Eileen Pereira said they are beginning group sessions for children, making parents more aware of their role in the process and working with teaching staff and visting schools.

Ms Pereira said: "We are going to start the children off in groups because they often feel quite isolated and don’t talk to each other."

The Big Lottery Fund also funded a three-year pilot scheme and the last three-year project, which only focused on one-to-one counselling with children.

Your Local Guardian:

Director Eileen Pereira

SFMS also provide a safe place where children can meet estranged parents in the presence of staff, known as supervised contact.

It claims to be the only supervised contact centre used by the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) left in Surrey after other closures.

To deal with the increasing demand Ms Pereira said they have hired four new workers for the contact centre funded by public body Cafcass.

She said: "We are now being inundated with referrals but we are quite a small centre. We are having to step up our work."

Christian charity Welcare stopped running its child contact services in Sutton and Croydon at the end of May.

Its website said: "This service is being taken in house in most of the areas we operate and has become too costly for Welcare to run."

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Counselling manager Christine Peters

SFMS counselling manager Christine Peters said they help children whose parents are going through the court process or separated some time ago.

She said: "Some children get stuck in stages of loss. We get a lot of children who are angry because there is still a lot of conflict between mum and dad. We help them work through those feelings."

Dame Sarah Goad, Lord Lieutenant of Surrey, officially opened the new project on Tuesday at St Michael's Catholic Church in Ashtead.

The launch is taking place in Ashtead because the centre in Miles Road, Epsom, is too small to accommodate all the guests.

Call Surrey Family and Mediation Services on 01372 749911, email admin@surreymediation.co.uk, or visit website www.sfms.org.uk.

Your Local Guardian:

Dame Sarah Goad