Local family support charity, Home-Start Spelthorne was launched in April 1986 and 25 years later is still providing support for young families with children under the age of 5. Over the last 25 years, 36 Volunteer Prepa-ration Courses have been run and 223 volun-teers have been recruited. This has enabled over 2000 families to receive some form of support, ranging from weekly visits in their homes and/or group support to remote sup-port via phone calls or Zoom meetings. Home-Start Spelthorne has seen many chang-es in the local community, but the need for parents and children to have a helping hand remains. Any family can find themselves in a challenging situation at any time. This might be caused by a relationship breakdown, isola-tion, mental or physical illness, disability, multiple births, addictions, financial worries or children with challenging behaviour. Home-Start understands that being a parent can be lonely, frustrating and overwhelming. Home-Start volunteers work alongside families to give compassionate and confidential support.
Volunteers are all required to attend compre-hensive training and references and a DBS check are essential. Some volunteers have been with Home Start almost since the start and several have celebrated over 5 and 10 years’ service. Our staff and trustees are also very committed and several members have reached long service milestones. Two of the trustees (Anne and Jenny) and one member of staff (Mandy) have been with Home-Start Spelthorne since the launch in 1986.
In the last year, due to the Coronavirus Pan-demic, Home-Start Spelthorne has needed to adapt and change to new ways of working and delivering support for families. Thankfully, the staff, trustees and volunteers have worked together to ensure a service can still be pro-vided safely for families. This has resulted in many of the team learning new IT and digital communication skills. Families have been grateful for the contact and it has proved to be so important that people stay connected and have the opportunity to share their worries and concerns as well as their achievements. Many children have benefitted from having their parents at home whilst sadly, others have ex-perienced more isolation, frustrations and challenges. It is likely that this will result in families needing increased intervention from community services.
Many charities face the challenge of raising sufficient funds to operate a service and Home-Start Spelthorne has seen the impact of Coronavirus on this as events had to be cancelled. There has been much generosity from the local community and the recent 25th Anniversary Prize Draw helped to raise approximately £1200. The annual fundraising target is £30,000 so any donations are gratefully received. We would like to encourage members of the community to take on their own fundraising challenges/events on behalf of Home-Start Spelthorne as this can really make a difference for families – BECAUSE CHILDHOOD CAN’T WAIT!
For more information about support, volunteering or fundraising, please visit our website:- www.home-startspelthorne.org or contact us on Tel no. 01784 463200