Karen was a teacher for over 30 years and once retired knew that volunteering for Home-Start was the right, next move for her. She’s now been a volunteer for three years, supporting three families so far as a home visitor. We caught up with her to talk about how she helped Jemima’s twin girls get ready for nursery.

“When I retired, I wanted to give something back. I got talking with a friend who volunteered with Home-Start. I’ll be perfectly honest, I didn’t know anything about Home- Start but when she explained it to me, I knew that was something I should look into. I went home, did my research and got in touch with my local Home-Start. I was signed up for training straight away! I just knew it was the right fit for me. It brings all my skills from teaching together, it’s all the fun of being with children without the stress of being the responsible person for so many things as I was at school.

I've always enjoyed working with children from the more deprived areas because you can make a big impact. A lot of people would say to me, ‘why do you want to teach in a place like that?’ And my answer would be ‘because they're such gorgeous children, they're challenging, but it’s what going on in their home that causes challenges in school as well’. I genuinely loved being able to make life better for them in that way.

When I started working with Jemima, she was isolated and felt judged by people. She’d been rehoused on her own to a new area, so that was challenging. The twins were great together, but they hadn't really had much interaction with other children.

One of the first things we spoke about, was that it would be good for them to be in a nursery setting so that they would socialise more. Jemima was great, you only had to point her in the right direction, and she'd get cracking with it.

There are complications with her ex-partner and she was really worried about the girls being somewhere where he could potentially access them without her knowing. I worked on giving her confidence knowing all the systems that were in place to protect them and know that they would be safe.

Jemima was trying so hard to do all the right things with the girls herself, so I saw my role as modelling behaviours like how you read with children and singing songs with them, we’d do the actions together as a four.

I was helping prepare the girls for what they might expect in nursery. I helped with letters, the alphabet, jigsaws - all of those things improved their vocabulary and their dexterity. I always took a book of a bag of books along when I visited, the girls love reading. They had a lot of books at home which was great, but it was just fantastic to be able to introduce them to some other books and model how you tell a story. They loved the parts where they could join in – The Gruffalo being their favourite – developing their pre-reading skills doing the voices and actions.

As there were two of them and only one of Jemima, it was quite nice that we would sometimes split so we could both be reading with them or maybe doing a puzzle or something different.

We also all played together, showing them how to share and take turns. We’d go on little trips out to the park and on the bus, the trips out were lovely.

When it was the girls first day at nursery, I went with Jemima. Just being there with her gave her confidence to know that they were going to be safe and she got a distraction so that she wasn't worrying. I think she also appreciated being able to talk to me about it and how the nursery setting works generally.

The girls were brilliant, as most children do, they just got on with it. One of them is more sociable than the other but Jemima could see that they were going to be fine. One of the girls has a Nystagmus (an eye condition) and the nursery were able to help Jemima to get the support she will need longer term. It was great to have that in place, which is going to make the transition through to school so much easier.

As soon as the girls were settled into nursery, you could see a massive difference in them. Their confidence just grew and grew. When I first met them, they didn't talk a lot, it took a while to get them going, especially one of the girls, they didn’t usually interact with anyone new.

I’d help Jemima model the kind of conversations and dialogue that you have with children and the questions you can ask them to get them sort of questioning themselves. The progress that they made was huge, we could both see that. It was incredible to see them on a trajectory as soon as they started communicating with other children and other adults. They started calling me ‘Auntie Karen’ which was lovely and I’d always look forward to seeing them. As far as I know, they are still very happily ticking along.

It probably sounds like we did a lot, but it was just the simple things. Jemima had got so much already in place, they just got that extra boost of having somebody else coming in and doing it with them.

For Jemima, her confidence grew too. Before we met, suddenly becoming a single parent, she felt judged by people. So understandably, the first few visits, she didn't really seem sure about the support. But I think she soon realised that I wasn't there to judge. It's none of my business. I really liked Jemima and I wanted to see her succeed. I think it gave her the confidence to know she shouldn't feel ashamed of anything.  I was there to keep letting her know that she was doing a really good job. Mums need to hear that sometimes.

In your experience as a teacher, how important is it that children are school ready?

It's massive. It’s not just about whether they can read or write, it’s about the socialisation too – interacting with other children and adults. Children need to learn there are orders to things and how you go about sharing or getting what you need. If a child is prepared, everything will come so much easier.

I think nurseries do such a fantastic job in preparing children for that transition.

As part of our big hopes, big future training, you can forget that there are parents aren’t aware of what children need to start school, especially fi you don’t come from a family where going to nursery and school is an automatic thing. And a lot of parents don't understand how to get access to support from nurseries or school, or maybe they have children who will find it very difficult to access that.

It is a minefield, it really is. It's hard.