Home Start

As the UK's largest family support charity, Home-Start is delighted to offer its backing to National Family Week. Parents supporting other parents is the bedrock of our work, this new event will highlight the importance and value of family life.
Kay Bews, Chief Executive

Website: www.home-start.org.uk

In an ideal world Home-Start would not be needed. All parents would be able to bring up their young children free of difficulties and stress.

But for many parents the pressures of family life and bringing up very young children are simply too much to cope with alone. There are so many reasons for this including - multiple births, poverty, illness, family breakdowns, isolation and physical and mental illnesses. And that's where Home-Start steps in…

Home-Start recruits and trains parent volunteers to visit other parents in their own homes to offer both practical and emotional support. As a charity that is both confidential and non-judgmental, we find that often we can reach out to families that statutory services often fail to. This is often echoed by the parents we support, said one mum of her Home-Start volunteer: "I like the fact that she comes to see me because she wants to, not because she has to. There is no paperwork, no clipboards, no form filling. Just another mum who knows how I feel and why I am finding things difficult".

Our fully trained volunteers are matched to a family living in the local community. They visit both mums and dads who are struggling to cope, in their own homes or by taking them to a Home-Start family support group.

It's not just families that benefit, but their volunteers too, said one Home-Start volunteer: "How humble I feel to be allowed to do this knowing that they do not feel threatened by me because I am a parent giving another parent a helping hand and am doing this because they want me to be there".

A typical Home-Start visit is hard to define because every family's needs are different. It might involve a rare "grown-up chat" over a cup of tea, helping a mum keep to an appointment by going with her and supporting her, or offering advice to new mums or dads. Just as there is no typical Home-Start visit, there is also no typical Home-Start volunteer.

Volunteers are not babysitters, home-helps or counsellors although from time to time they may perform all those tasks. It's about friendship - one parent helping another. What seems like tiny steps can help parents overcome serious situations. With volunteer help parents can gain the confidence to manage on their own and give their children the best possible start in life. A mum supported by Home-Start said that her volunteer was like having "armbands in deep water. She kept me afloat when everything around me was sinking".

We have 340 Home-Starts across the UK, more than 15,000 parent volunteers support nearly 35,000 families and almost 70,000 children.

Home-Start fully supports National Family Week because we see on a day to day basis the importance and value of family life.