Leading family support charity, Home-Start UK, held a national volunteer summit for Home-Start volunteers as it marks 50 years of supporting families.

The summit, which was hosted online on October 17-18, contained a mixture of lectures and panel discussions with industry pioneers and formed part of a national discussion around the future of volunteering.

Across the two day event, a wealth of key opinion leaders from the charity sector joined the event to discuss key issues surrounding the future of volunteering, including how charities can continue to attract volunteers at a time when patterns of volunteering are changing, how organisations can ensure volunteer opportunities are open to everyone, and how organisations can sustainably fund their volunteering work.

Speakers from Age UK, BBC Children In Need, Groundwork, NCVO, Royal Opera House, The Scouts, Vision for Volunteering, Volunteer Scotland, Waffle, HiB, Waltham Forest, SJ Pickering Consulting and Sarah E. Frost were the organisations that shared their wealth of knowledge on Volunteering on what was a hugely successful event.

One volunteer who attended the event said

“The event was energising with a wonderful choice and range of presenters. Some fantastic ideas and perspectives shared, including familiar ones that chime with and reinforce what we're trying to do.”

Sally Munday, Volunteer Development Manager at Home-Start UK who said

“Our National Volunteer Summit was a great opportunity for our network to come together in celebration of our 50 years supporting families. We had the opportunity to explore what comes next for volunteering. We have always known that as a movement we are stronger together, so getting together to discuss, learn and discover the future of volunteering is a fantastic way to start our next 50 years with volunteers at the heart of Home-Start. 

“We were so excited to hear from sector leaders such as NCVO, The Vision for Volunteering and Volunteer Scotland as well as other charities and organisations such as the Scouts, the Royal Opera House and more that can help guide us through the challenges and opportunities that face the volunteering world right now.”

The event was opened with a message from Baroness Floella Benjamin, who is Patron of Home-Start Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham who said

“I’m so proud to say that Home-Start do such an important job supporting parents and their children in their earliest years because as I always say childhood lasts a lifetime so it is our duty to build every child’s confidence by nurturing, supporting and loving them in order for them to pass on those qualities to their children.”

Since 1973, Home-Start has supported over 1.5 million children with the 180 local Home-Starts supporting 56,000 children in 27,000 families in communities across the UK last year.