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"Our volunteers lead from the front - they are already community leaders and know a thing or two about sticking with it when times are tough, they have passion, tenacity, and the sheer dogged persistence to grow their service in the first place and to keep it going" says Home-Start at big society conferences.
Kay Bews and Carol Brown, senior staff at Home-Start UK, spoke at two big society conferences. Held in London, (16th February 2011) and Liverpool, (15th March 2011), the conferences were called The Big Society in Practice/Big Society in the North.
Around 200 delegates from children and youth services, regeneration and economic development, social enterprises and private companies attended.
Home-Start was on the platforms alongside Nick Hurd MP, minister for Civil Society and Lord Wei, government advisor for the big society, and organisations such as: The National Council for Voluntary Youth Services, CSV, National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), Volunteering England and the Duke of Edinburgh's Award.
Kay Bews said: "I am especially pleased that Home-Start is being recognised as a vital, national force for volunteering and social good, and that we are being invited to events such as these to share our experience".
Carol Brown presented a workshop at the Liverpool conference called, Engage and motivate citizens to become volunteers and take ownership of projects. Read exerpts from her presentation and learn how Home-Start harnesses the passion of 16,000 volunteers every year.
"Today, we are looking deeper into how we engage with those who are willing to take a leading role within their community, be the entrepreneurs, and be the catalyst for change so that this big society has some chance of delivering positive steps forward.
I am going to tell you just a little about how we do it in Home-Start, how we find, engage with, develop and value our volunteers and their work. And their work can be very challenging – supporting some of the most vulnerable and isolated families with young children in the UK.
Our volunteers lead from the front - they are already community leaders and know a thing or two about sticking with it when times are tough, they have passion, tenacity, and the sheer dogged persistence to grow their service in the first place and to keep it going. The average age of a local Home-Start service in England is 16 years and I think that is quite an achievement and says something about sustainability and the resilience of local trustees.
Volunteers are the very life blood of Home-Start and we treasure them. They come from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all ages with all sorts of life experiences and talents, many of them volunteering for the very first time.
Our home visiting volunteers are what Home-Start is probably best known for. They are the ones who do the actual work, who support families, visiting them every week at home bringing for some a much needed lifeline. These are community leaders too – and they also make things happen.
Our committed and caring volunteers are all parents themselves or have experience of bringing up children. They are friendly, approachable people who other parents can trust and rely on to listen without judging and help them regain confidence in their own abilities as parents.
So the right people with the right motivation, the right training and support and for us in Home-Start and many other local community groups someone who is content to do the ordinary day-to-day basic act of giving time. There is often no glamour to what they do, no status. But nevertheless some 16,000 Home-Start volunteers are visiting families every week right across the UK – and doing a vital yet quite ordinary thing – helping parents cope. And that very ordinary thing is essential if we are to strengthen our communities and empower parents.
Our family support volunteers are indeed community leaders. On a one-to-one basis they are building confidence in other parents, supporting them to take up and use local services essential for their well being, we are building good foundations within families and encouraging parents to get involved and be part of their community, not be afraid to join in. The parents we support often go on to becoming volunteers – that’s not a cycle of deprivation, that’s a cycle of positive community capacity building in action.
One thing we never do is assume that because they are a volunteer, some things are too difficult for them. In over 90% of the families our volunteers support change really happens. The consistent adult role model can do so much – build confidence, offer a helping hand, show a new way of doing something, give a gentle ‘nudge’ to seek out other support or as in HS, to make friends with another parent in the neighbourhood. But of most importance is their gift of time – and that is something that professionals can find hard to offer due to pressure of work.
Home-Start feels that we have been doing this thing called the big society for almost 40 years. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things to support their own local community."
Find out more about our home visiting volunteers
