Our Structure and History
How Home-Start is set up
The Home-Start network
The Home-Start network consists of Home-Start
UK and 340 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 | |
| 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 Northern Ireland | |
| 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
