Home-Start South & West Devon

Home-Start volunteers help families with young children to deal with the challenges they face, by supporting the parents and helping them build better lives for their children.

Raising a young family can often have its challenges and everyone has difficult days, when just sharing similar experiences with a friend or chatting over a cup of coffee can really help to put things in perspective. But what if every day starts seeming like a ‘bad day’ and you feel there is no-one you can turn to for help or even talk to about your problems? This is exactly why Home-Start was founded in 1973 by Margaret Harrison who believed that ‘supporting a family was best done in their home where it can be shaped to the needs of the family’. She realised that other parents had the necessary experience to support and give friendship to parents struggling to cope with life’s difficulties, and by helping them, this in turn would give the children a good start in life. Her idea started in Leicester and there are now 16,000 volunteers supporting 30,000 families and 60,000 children across the UK, as well as Home-Start movements in a further 22 countries.

Home-Start South & West Devon was originally based in Kingsbridge and has spread through the area to incorporate Plymouth and the South Hams, followed by Tavistock about five years ago and more recently Okehampton and Torquay. Home-visiting support has adapted over the years to meet the changing needs of families, but the ethos of the charity still centres around volunteers working with families to find solutions to the problems they face. These issues can arise from a host of challenges such as feelings of isolation, anxiety, post-natal illness, disability, mental health issues, bereavement, multiple births, children’s behavioural issues, poverty or financial difficulties.

Families can self-refer themselves to the charity for support, or often health workers, schools and children’s centres will suggest Home-Start as an option and discuss the services it offers with families they believe could benefit from additional support. A Home-Start co-ordinator checks the circumstances of each referral and matches the family with a volunteer who they think will be able to support the family’s needs. After that, the volunteer spends two hours a week over the following 6 to 12 months, getting to know the family, listening to them and offering support depending on their circumstances, their requirements and what they want help with. For some people the volunteer can be the only person they talk to regularly, and knowing that they will see the volunteer each week can be a real lifeline. Some of the comments Home-Start receives show how important a volunteer’s visit can be:

“I have a chance to go out for a coffee, someone to talk openly to.”

“I can’t thank [Home-Start] enough for where they’ve left me – happier than this time last year – in a big part due to them.”

“[My volunteer] is a parent herself and I respect her knowledge and her personal experience.”

Volunteers help families in many different ways but one of the most important aspects is helping people access local services in their area, since families can often not know about the services available, nor understand how to access them. Simply signposting or accompanying them on a first visit to a children’s centre, Citizens Advice, a health appointment or for advice on housing and finance can make a major difference to their current situation and give them the confidence to use other services in the future. An everyday task such as catching a bus can seem quite unfeasible for a person suffering from anxiety, and when a Home-Start volunteer recently helped a parent overcome their fear of bus travel, it opened up a whole new world of possibilities.

Home-Start volunteers come from a broad range of backgrounds and include both men and women from a wide age group – the only essential requirements are that volunteers must have had significant parenting experience, they need to be able to listen and be non-judgemental. Volunteers are the backbone of the charity and Home-Start ensures that they receive a thorough eight-week training programme before they start, and can then rely on a strong network of support themselves, to help them find solutions for the families they work with. Co-ordinators get to know all the volunteers during the training and this helps them to match volunteers and families. The whole process can often be extremely positive and rewarding for the volunteers as well as the families, helping people to step out of their comfort zone and learn new skills.

And if you’re still wondering why the work Home-Start does is so important, I think the following words from its website say it all: ‘Children's essential social, emotional and life skills are developed when they are babies and young children. Those who have stable, loving, consistent, fun childhoods have a greater chance of developing into healthy teenagers and happier adults, with better job prospects, healthy relationships and improved mental and physical health.’

Rosemary Best

If you would like to find out more about Home-Start’s services, become a volunteer with Home-Start or make a donation to the charity please call 01752 249740 or email homestart.shpt@gmail.com

The next volunteer training programme will be starting after Easter in the Woolwell area.