News Release
House of Lords visit to local family support charity
Issued: 24th March 2010
Home-Start Camden who support families struggling to cope, recently played host to Lord Listowel, vice chair of the all party parliamentary group on Young People in Care and Leaving Care.
The purpose of the visit was for Lord Listowel to find out more about the important role that Home-Start volunteers play in early intervention work and how offering confidential and non judgmental support can be a way of accessing hard-to-reach families.
One of 336 Home-Starts that are spread across the UK, Home-Start Camden’s 96 volunteers support nearly 100 families and over 150 children for a whole variety of reasons, including; isolation, poverty, disability, lone parenting and post natal illness.
Lord Listowel listened to both families and volunteers share their experiences of the support service that Home-Start provides and also heard from two members of staff who explained that Home-Start volunteer training was now accredited. And was helping volunteers access training and support. One of Home-Start Camden’s volunteers is now training to be a social worker and others have found the training helps them access work.
He also heard from staff that local GP’s working with Home-Start Camden on a specific project are interested in whether the help given by Home-Start can reduce the incidence of depression and therefore reduce demands on the NHS.
Two of the trustees of Home-Start Camden also spoke about the experience of families living on the edge financially, the effort that had to go in to fundraising and the difficulty of getting core funding without which Home-Start Camden cannot survive.
At the end of the visit, Lord Listowel offered to return the hospitality with a trip to the House of Lords.
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Contact:
Mina Gohil, Home-Start Camden t: 0207 4241603
e: mina@homestartcamden.org
Notes to Editor
Home-Start
Home-Start is the UK’s leading family support charity. We recruit and train volunteers to support parents with at least one child under the age of five. Our home visiting work is unique in the UK. The charity was set up in 1973 and now had 336 local Home-Starts spread across the UK. Almost 16,000 volunteers visit families in their own homes – parents supporting other parents in a variety of situations including isolation, bereavement, multiple births, illness or disability. Nationally Home-Start supports nearly 34,000 families across the UK.
Home-Start Camden has a total of 78 volunteers supporting 96 families with 152 children under 5 and 43 older siblings. Home-Start Camden has trained 55 new volunteers during the last year. Funding comes from the Big Lottery Fund, Henry Smith Charity, John Lyons Foundation, Lloyds TSB Foundation for England and Wales as well as private donations.
