Our Structure and History
How Home-Start is set up
The Home-Start network
The Home-Start network consists of Home-Start UK and 336 affiliated schemes. Together they form the Home-Start service, delivering one-to-one support, friendship and practical help to young families.
Local Home-Starts (schemes)
Each local Home-Start is an independently registered charity that supports local families in exactly the way that is needed in its local community. Each local Home-Start is set up and run by people from the local area, and is responsible for raising all its own funds. The (usually) small local staff team recruits and trains local volunteers and carefully matches them with local families who need support. Each local Home-Start is managed by a board of volunteer trustees. The constitution of a local scheme is based on a nationally agreed model, adapted for local circumstances. This structure is commonplace in the voluntary sector where independent schemes adhere to a national framework for core functions, standards, policies and good practice, but stand alone financially and in terms of local accountability.
Home-Start UK
All local Home-Start schemes are supported by Home-Start UK. Home-Start UK is an independently registered charity that provides the support that local Home-Start Schemes need to carry out their family support work through: up-to-date training for staff, volunteers and trustees; information and guidance on governance; legal and human resources advice; help with fundraising; lobbying of national and local government and funders; running volunteer recruitment campaigns; providing national quality standards; supporting community groups to set up new Home-Start schemes and representing Home-Start on national, regional and local fora.
The History of Home-Start
When Home-Start was founded in 1973 no-one involved in this unique parent-to-parent support service imagined that one local Home-Start in Leicester would be so effective and so popular with families that it would expand to more than 300 within 30 years. It did and now Home-Start is the UK's leading family support charity and is expanding into even more areas of the UK.
| 1973 | First Home-Start scheme set up in Leicester by Margaret Harrison. |
| 1981 | Home-Start formally set up as a national organisation (with nine schemes in Leicester, Hinckley, Charnwood, Nottingham, Ripley & District, Bristol, Harrow, Herefordshire, and Melton & Rutland). |
| 1983 | First Northern Irish scheme set up (East Belfast) |
| 1983 | First Welsh scheme set up (Conwy) |
| 1984 | First Scottish scheme set up (Perth) |
| 1984 | Home-Start set up in British Forces Germany |
| 1987 | Home-Start set up in British Forces Cyprus |
| 1994 | First formal preparation course run for volunteers. |
| 1998 | Home-Start International founded (with contacts from 40 countries wishing to set up their own schemes) |
| 2003 | 30th anniversary of Home-Start |
| 2004 | Home-Start was the only children's charity mentioned in the Government's Green Paper, "Every Child Matters" |
| 2004 | Government funds Home-Start to support an additional 5,000 families each year up to 2006-07. The additional funding will also help Home-Start's objective of providing a universal service to every family, wherever they live. |
| 2005 | 21st anniversary of Home-Start Scotland |
| 2005 | 21st anniversary of Home-Start in British Forces Germany |
| 2008 | 25th anniversary of Home-Start in Northern Ireland |
| 2008 | 25th anniversary of Home-Start in Wales |
| 2008 | 35th anniversary of Home-Start |
So, the man from Mars coming here today would say: ‘Why as earthlings are you not investing every penny you can possibly afford into your most precious resource, which is your children and families?'
Professor Al Aynsley-Green
Children's Commissioner for England
