A Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation built from a single honest conversation, and grown into something Grangemouth's new mothers rely on every week.
Vibrant Health Advocates – Aureon was established as a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation because the founders believed that charity law's governance requirements would give the organisation the accountability and durability it needed to serve Grangemouth mothers over the long term. That commitment to structure is not bureaucratic: it reflects a conviction that the women who come to us deserve an organisation they can trust, one that will still be here when their daughter has a baby of her own.
Our work is grounded in Grangemouth's specific reality. This is a town with a proud industrial identity and a close-knit working-class heritage, where asking for help can sometimes feel like admitting weakness. Our facilitators — most of them mothers themselves, many with roots in the local area — understand that dynamic, and they have built an environment in which seeking support is reframed as the practical, courageous thing it actually is.
We work hard to make our circles feel nothing like a professional appointment or a self-help class: they feel like a good kitchen-table conversation with people who know what they are talking about.
Alongside our circles, we maintain active referral relationships with NHS Forth Valley's perinatal mental health team, the Falkirk Council health visiting service, and a range of local family support organisations. We are not trying to replace statutory care; we are trying to fill the spaces between appointments, between check-ins, between those moments when a mother needs someone and is not quite sure where to turn. In those spaces — which can be very wide — Aureon is present.
Aureon's origins lie in a conversation that took place in the car park of a Grangemouth community centre in the autumn of 2018. Two local mothers — both working in health roles, both having struggled more than they had expected after their first births — were comparing notes on what had helped and what had not.
What struck them was how consistently the most valuable thing had been other women: not clinical guidance alone, though that had its place, but the frank, sometimes funny, always honest exchange that happened when new mothers talked openly with each other. They began gathering a small informal group, and within a year it was clear that the need was far too large for an informal arrangement.
They registered as an SCIO, recruited a small board with experience spanning health, finance, and community development, and opened their first formal postnatal circle in a church hall in Grangemouth in the spring of 2019.
In the years since, Aureon has grown steadily and carefully, always at the pace the community itself has set. When we expanded our befriending programme, it was because circle members told us that a friend who could not attend on Tuesday was still an isolated friend for the other six days of the week. When we introduced evening sessions, it was because partners' shift patterns made daytime provision invisible to a section of mothers who needed us most. Every development here has followed the same logic: listen carefully to the women in front of you, and let their lives shape what you do.
See our programmes
Where it all began, 2018
Our first circle, 2019
Vibrant Health Advocates – Aureon exists to ensure that every new mother in Grangemouth and the surrounding Falkirk area has access to a warm, evidence-informed, peer-supported space in which to protect and strengthen her mental and physical health during the postnatal period. We believe that the isolation, self-doubt, and health risks that too many new mothers carry alone are not inevitable — they are the product of inadequate community support — and that a well-resourced, deeply trusted local organisation can change that reality, one circle, one befriending relationship, and one honest conversation at a time.
Aureon is governed by a voluntary board of trustees who bring together expertise in community health, financial management, and lived experience of the postnatal journey in Grangemouth. Our trustees set the strategic direction of the organisation, ensure our finances are managed with care and full transparency, and hold us accountable to the mothers and families we serve. We are grateful for their sustained commitment and proud of the thoughtful, values-led governance culture they have built over the years.