"Home-Start stopped our lives falling apart"

Dad of one, Sam Kerman, explains how Home-Start helped his family cope during lockdown and saved him from reaching crisis point.

“My wife Vic has a number of health issues that limit her mobility. In the past year, she’s only been out of the house two or three times. It’s devastating for her. I dream about the day I can watch her walk down the road with our son Leon.

Life was tough enough, but COVID-19 made our situation so much worse. Financially it’s battered us. I work in a toy shop, so my work has been hugely affected during all the lockdowns.

Apart from briefly returning to work over Christmas, I’ve spent most of the year at home. I’m the only earner, so when I was put on furlough the 20% reduction in my wage put us under huge strain.

Not working affects my mental health. I find the loss of routine difficult and can once again feel myself slipping back into depression. Vic is tough. She’s like me and hides her true feelings well. But, I know she also struggles. She hates that she can’t go out. She’d like nothing more than to take Leon to the park.

Without Home-Start High Peak we’d be in an absolute mess – I’ve no doubt about that. I’m convinced having Home-Start’s support has saved me from depression, and has helped Vic manage better at home.

Whatever the weather we know Heather from Home-Start High Peak will do anything to support us. Leon loves to see Heather, and it’s of great comfort that she’s in our lives.

From emotional support, to practical support, to helping Leon grow and develop, our lives have been enriched by Home-Start.

Home-Start has stopped our lives falling apart by reducing stress and anxiety.

As hard as lockdown was, I feel optimistic about the future. Vic is finally seeing a doctor about her health issues, Leon is settled at nursery and I’m now back at work. I’m also optimistic that one day I will see Vic and Leon walk hand in hand to the park. That will be the most cherished memory of all.”

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We may need to store and process your information to manage your donation or shop order, or to provide you with the service you have used. We will always keep your data securely. You can read our privacy policy here: www.home-start.org.uk/privacy

By submitting this form you are agreeing to our terms and conditions

1. Introduction

1.1 These terms and conditions shall govern your use of our website.

1.2 If you register with our website, submit any material to our website or use any of our website services, we will ask you to expressly agree to these terms and conditions.

1.3 Our website uses cookies; by using our website or agreeing to these terms and conditions, you consent to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of our privacy and cookies policy.

1.4 To find out how to make a complaint, and how it will be dealt with, you can read our complaints policy here.

2. Credit

2.1 This document was created using a template from SEQ Legal (http://www.seqlegal.com).

3. Copyright notice

3.2 Subject to the express provisions of these terms and conditions:

(a) we, together with our licensors, own and control all the copyright and other intellectual property rights in our website and the material on our website; and

(b) all the copyright and other intellectual property rights in our website and the material on our website are reserved.

4. Licence to use website

4.1 You may:

(a) view pages from our website in a web browser;

(b) download pages from our website for caching in a web browser;

(d) stream audio and video files from our website; and

(e) use our website services by means of a web browser,

subject to the other provisions of these terms and conditions.

4.2 Except as expressly permitted by Section 4.1 or the other provisions of these terms and conditions, you must not download any material from our website or save any such material to your computer.

4.3 You may only use our website for your own personal and business purposes, and you must not use our website for any other purposes.

4.4 Except as expressly permitted by these terms and conditions, you must not edit or otherwise modify any material on our website.

4.5 Unless you own or control the relevant rights in the material, or if you have been given permission by Home-Start UK, or are part of the Home-Start network, you must not:

(a) republish material from our website (including republication on another website);

(b) sell, rent or sub-license material from our website;

(d) exploit material from our website for a commercial purpose; or

(e) redistribute material from our website.

4.6 Notwithstanding Section 4.5, you may redistribute our newsletter in print and electronic form to any person.

4.7 We reserve the right to restrict access to areas of our website, or indeed our whole website, at our discretion; you must not circumvent or bypass, or attempt to circumvent or bypass, any access restriction measures on our website.

5. Acceptable use

5.1 You must not:

(a) use our website in any way or take any action that causes, or may cause, damage to the website or impairment of the performance, availability or accessibility of the website;

(b) use our website in any way that is unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful, or in connection with any unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful purpose or activity;

(c) use our website to copy, store, host, transmit, send, use, publish or distribute any material which consists of (or is linked to) any spyware, computer virus, Trojan horse, worm, keystroke logger, rootkit or other malicious computer software;

(d) conduct any systematic or automated data collection activities (including without limitation scraping, data mining, data extraction and data harvesting) on or in relation to our website without our express written consent;

(e) access or otherwise interact with our website using any robot, spider or other automated means, except for the purpose of search engine indexing;

(f) violate the directives set out in the robots.txt file for our website; or

(g) use data collected from our website for any direct marketing activity (including without limitation email marketing, SMS marketing, telemarketing and direct mailing).

5.2 You must not use data collected from our website to contact individuals, companies or other persons or entities, who have not given their permission to be contacted

5.3 You must ensure that all the information you supply to us through our website, or in relation to our website, is true, accurate, current, complete and non-misleading.

6. Registration and accounts

6.1 You may register for an account with our website by completing and submitting the account registration form on our website, and clicking on the verification link in the email that the website will send to you.

6.2 You must not allow any other person to use your account to access the website.

6.3 You must notify us in writing immediately if you become aware of any unauthorised use of your account.

6.4 You must not use any other person's account to access the website, unless you have that person's express permission to do so.

7. User login details

7.1 If you register for an account with our website, you will be asked to choose a user ID and password.

7.2 Your user ID must not be liable to mislead and must comply with the content rules set out in Section 10; you must not use your account or user ID for or in connection with the impersonation of any person.

7.3 You must keep your password confidential.

7.4 You must notify us in writing immediately if you become aware of any disclosure of your password.

7.5 You are responsible for any activity on our website arising out of any failure to keep your password confidential, and may be held liable for any losses arising out of such a failure.

8. Cancellation and suspension of account

8.1 We may:

(a) suspend your account;

(b) cancel your account; and/or

at any time in our sole discretion without notice or explanation.

8.2 You may cancel your account on our website by contacting [email protected] and requesting your account be cancelled.

9. Your content: licence

9.1 In these terms and conditions, "your content" means all works and materials (including without limitation text, graphics, images, audio material, video material, audio-visual material, scripts, software and files) that you submit to us or our website for storage or publication on, processing by, or transmission via, our website.

9.2 You grant to us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use, reproduce, store, adapt, publish, translate and distribute your content in any existing or future media.

9.3 You grant to us the right to sub-license the rights licensed under Section 9.2.

9.4 You grant to us the right to bring an action for infringement of the rights licensed under Section 9.2.

9.5 You hereby waive all your moral rights in your content to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law; and you warrant and represent that all other moral rights in your content have been waived to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law.

9.6 You may edit your content to the extent permitted using the editing functionality made available on our website.

9.7 Without prejudice to our other rights under these terms and conditions, if you breach any provision of these terms and conditions in any way, or if we reasonably suspect that you have breached these terms and conditions in any way, we may delete, unpublish or edit any or all of your content.

10. Your content: rules

10.1 You warrant and represent that your content will comply with these terms and conditions.

10.2 Your content must not be illegal or unlawful, must not infringe any person's legal rights, and must not be capable of giving rise to legal action against any person (in each case in any jurisdiction and under any applicable law).

10.3 Your content, and the use of your content by us in accordance with these terms and conditions, must not:

(a) be libellous or maliciously false;

(b) be obscene or indecent;

(c) infringe any copyright, moral right, database right, trade mark right, design right, right in passing off, or other intellectual property right;

(d) infringe any right of confidence, right of privacy or right under data protection legislation;

(e) constitute negligent advice or contain any negligent statement;

(f) constitute an incitement to commit a crime, instructions for the commission of a crime or the promotion of criminal activity;

(g) be in contempt of any court, or in breach of any court order;

(h) be in breach of racial or religious hatred or discrimination legislation;

(i) be blasphemous;

(j) be in breach of official secrets legislation;

(k) be in breach of any contractual obligation owed to any person;

(l) depict violence;

(m) be pornographic, lewd, suggestive or sexually explicit;

(n) be untrue, false, inaccurate or misleading;

(o) consist of or contain any instructions, advice or other information which may be acted upon and could, if acted upon, cause illness, injury or death, or any other loss or damage;

(p) constitute spam;

(q) be offensive, deceptive, fraudulent, threatening, abusive, harassing, anti-social, menacing, hateful, discriminatory or inflammatory; or

(r) cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to any person.

11. Limited warranties

11.1 We do not warrant or represent:

(a) the completeness or accuracy of the information published on our website;

(b) that the material on the website is up to date; or

11.2 We reserve the right to discontinue or alter any or all of our website services, and to stop publishing our website, at any time in our sole discretion without notice or explanation; and save to the extent expressly provided otherwise in these terms and conditions, you will not be entitled to any compensation or other payment upon the discontinuance or alteration of any website services, or if we stop publishing the website.

11.3 To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law and subject to Section 12.1, we exclude all representations and warranties relating to the subject matter of these terms and conditions, our website and the use of our website.

12. Limitations and exclusions of liability

12.1 Nothing in these terms and conditions will:

(a) limit or exclude any liability for death or personal injury resulting from negligence;

(b) limit or exclude any liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;

(d) exclude any liabilities that may not be excluded under applicable law.

12.2 The limitations and exclusions of liability set out in this Section 12 and elsewhere in these terms and conditions:

(a) are subject to Section 12.1; and

(b) govern all liabilities arising under these terms and conditions or relating to the subject matter of these terms and conditions, including liabilities arising in contract, in tort (including negligence) and for breach of statutory duty, except to the extent expressly provided otherwise in these terms and conditions.

12.3 To the extent that our website and the information and services on our website are provided free of charge, we will not be liable for any loss or damage of any nature.

12.4 We will not be liable to you in respect of any losses arising out of any event or events beyond our reasonable control.

12.5 We will not be liable to you in respect of any business losses, including (without limitation) loss of or damage to profits, income, revenue, use, production, anticipated savings, business, contracts, commercial opportunities or goodwill.

12.6 We will not be liable to you in respect of any loss or corruption of any data, database or software.

12.7 We will not be liable to you in respect of any special, indirect or consequential loss or damage.

12.8 You accept that we have an interest in limiting the personal liability of our officers and employees and, having regard to that interest, you acknowledge that we are a limited liability entity; you agree that you will not bring any claim personally against our officers or employees in respect of any losses you suffer in connection with the website or these terms and conditions (this will not, of course, limit or exclude the liability of the limited liability entity itself for the acts and omissions of our officers and employees).

13. Breaches of these terms and conditions

13.1 Without prejudice to our other rights under these terms and conditions, if you breach these terms and conditions in any way, or if we reasonably suspect that you have breached these terms and conditions in any way, we may:

(a) send you one or more formal warnings;

(b) temporarily suspend your access to our website;

(d) block computers using your IP address from accessing our website;

(e) contact any or all of your internet service providers and request that they block your access to our website;

(f) commence legal action against you, whether for breach of contract or otherwise; and/or

(g) suspend or delete your account on our website.

13.2 Where we suspend or prohibit or block your access to our website or a part of our website, you must not take any action to circumvent such suspension or prohibition or blocking (including without limitation creating and/or using a different account).

14. Variation

14.1 We may revise these terms and conditions from time to time.

14.2 The revised terms and conditions shall apply to the use of our website from the date of publication of the revised terms and conditions on the website, and you hereby waive any right you may otherwise have to be notified of, or to consent to, revisions of these terms and conditions14.3

15. Assignment

15.1 You hereby agree that we may assign, transfer, sub-contract or otherwise deal with our rights and/or obligations under these terms and conditions.

15.2 You may not without our prior written consent assign, transfer, sub-contract or otherwise deal with any of your rights and/or obligations under these terms and conditions.

16. Severability

16.1 If a provision of these terms and conditions is determined by any court or other competent authority to be unlawful and/or unenforceable, the other provisions will continue in effect.

16.2 If any unlawful and/or unenforceable provision of these terms and conditions would be lawful or enforceable if part of it were deleted, that part will be deemed to be deleted, and the rest of the provision will continue in effect.

17. Third party rights

17.1 A contract under these terms and conditions is for our benefit and your benefit, and is not intended to benefit or be enforceable by any third party.

17.2 The exercise of the parties' rights under a contract under these terms and conditions is not subject to the consent of any third party.

18. Online Trading Policies

18.1 Customers can choose to use Stripe or Paypal to process online payments securely.

18.2 Contact us
If you have a query about your payment, please contact us at:

Home-Start UK
The Crescent
King Street
Leicester
LE1 6RX

Tel: 0116 464 5490
Email: [email protected]

18.3 Online Catalogue

18.3.1 Descriptions
We endeavour to ensure that the items and descriptions provided in our online catalogue are accurate. Please note that all sizes are approximate and colours and designs may vary. Please see our Returns clause below.

18.3.2 Availability
All orders are subject to availability. If the item you have ordered is not available we may send you a similar alternative. Any substitutions will not affect your statutory rights.

18.3.3 Orders
All orders are subject to our acceptance (see Refusal of Transaction clause below) and will be processed in accordance with the conditions of delivery and delivery charges set out on the website.

18.3.4 Deliveries
Deliveries are normally dispatched within five working days; however please allow 28 days for delivery.

18.3.5 Prices and Payment
All prices are inclusive of VAT and are those prevailing at date of despatch. Delivery charges must be paid in addition to the sum of the items ordered as shown on the online order form. Payment can be made by any of the methods set out on the payment order form on this website.

18.4 Returns
We trust you will be satisfied with the items which you purchase from our online shop. In the unlikely event that you are not satisfied you may return your goods for any reason within seven working days starting from the day after you have received the goods. We will only pay for returns if the goods are faulty.

18.5 Queries

Please contact:
Home-Start UK
The Crescent
King Street
Leicester
LE1 6RX

Tel: 0116 464 5490
Email: [email protected]

18.6 The Contract of Sale
The purchase is not made until you have completed the online payment order form and you have accepted these terms and conditions; you can download and print these terms of trade. Receipt of your order will be acknowledged in writing, usually by email.

18.7 Distance Selling Right of Cancellation
You have a right to cancel your order, within seven days of receipt. This right will be confirmed to you in the written acknowledgement of your order. Please note that the purchase price will only be repaid if you return the product in merchantable condition and the cost of returning it is not recoverable unless it was faulty on receipt.

18.8 Refusal of Transaction
We reserve the right at any time to withdraw any item from the online shop and to refuse to process a transaction for any reason, at any time and at our sole discretion. We will not be liable to you or any third party for any refusal to enter into a transaction for any reason.

18.9
In order to be eligible to purchase items on this website and to lawfully enter into and form contracts on this website under English law you must:

• provide your real name, phone number, payment details and other requested information;
• be over 18 years of age;
• stipulate a delivery address;
• possess a valid credit or debit card issued in the cardholder’s name.

18.10
When you make an offer to buy an item on this website, you specifically authorise us to transmit information (including any updated information) or to obtain information about you from third parties from time to time, including but not limited to your debit or credit card number or credit reports, to authenticate your identity, to validate your credit card authorisation and to authorise individual purchase transactions.

19. Privacy policy
Our Privacy Policy explains how we collect and use the information you give us across all of our channels. You can read our privacy policy by clicking the link. This link will open in a new window and links to our main website. Read our Privacy Policy

20. Entire agreement

20.1 Subject to Section 12.1, these terms and conditions, together with our privacy and cookies policy, shall constitute the entire agreement between you and us in relation to your use of our website and shall supersede all previous agreements between you and us in relation to your use of our website.

21. Law and jurisdiction

21.1 These terms and conditions shall be governed by and construed in accordance with English law.

22.2 Any disputes relating to these terms and conditions shall be subject to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England.

23. Statutory and regulatory disclosures

23.1 We are registered in England; you can find the online version of the register at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house , and our registration number is 05382181

23.2 We are a charitable company limited by guarantee registered as a charity with Charity Commission in England and are subject to rules, which can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/charity-commission. We are registered as a charity in Scotland with the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) and are subject to rules, which can be found at http://www.oscr.org.uk/

23.4 Our VAT number is 079779721.

24. Our details

24.1 This website is owned and operated by Home-Start UK.

24.2 We are registered as a charity in England and Wales under registration number 1108837 and in Scotland under registration number SC039172 , and our registered office is at The Home-Start Centre, 8-10 West Walk, Leicester, LE1 7NA

24.3 Our principal place of business is at Home-Start, King Street, Leicester, LE1 6RX

24.4 You can contact us:

(a) by post, using the postal address given above;

(b) using our website contact form;

(d) by email, using [email protected].

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