Home-Start UK Welcomes Launch of The Royal Foundation’s Early Childhood Explainer Series

Home-Start is delighted to be working with The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood as an early adopter of their beautifully animated short films that bring to life the science of early brain development. 

These beautifully crafted, easy to understand videos explore the crucial role that early relationships and experiences play in shaping a child’s future. Covering everything from how the brain grows, to building resilience and supporting emotional wellbeing, the series offers invaluable insights for anyone supporting families with babies or young children, whether as a volunteer, early years practitioner or community leader. 

At Home-Start, we know that parenting isn’t always easy. That’s why we’re delighted to be using these new resources to strengthen the support we offer to more than 50,000 families each year across the UK. 

Designed as a practical tool for those supporting families during early childhood, we’re embedding the films within our high-quality national volunteer training offer, further strengthening our focus on:  

  • Giving more children the best start in life by supporting parents and carers to develop strong, nurturing relationships with their babies and young children. 

  • Enriching the home learning environment by empowering parents and carers with the knowledge, skills and confidence that they need and value. 

  • Providing compassionate and holistic support to help the whole family thrive. 

  • Helping more babies and children to have happy, healthy childhoods, with the foundations in place to enable the best start in life. 

We were delighted that Katharine Barber, CEO of Home-Start Oxford, was invited to join the practitioner advisory group to support the creation of the animations. Katharine said: 

“The idea behind these animations from The Royal Foundation is to increase understanding of the everyday actions adults can take to promote social and emotional skills in early childhood.   

This is something that our staff and volunteers help families with every day. Being invited to collaborate on the project is an incredible acknowledgement of the importance of that work and the magical role our volunteers play.  Local Home-Start’s like ours hold a unique position – our links and reach in both the community and with practitioners is strong, so we are well placed to help spread the messages contained in these animations.  Importantly, our staff and volunteers can do this in a sensitive and impactful way.   

By providing these animations to our volunteers, it will help enhance their own learning and in turn, our volunteers can help model these skills for parents.  My hope is that these will become another powerful source of change.” 

Sarah McMullen, Director of Network Impact, Home-Start UK said: 

“Home-Start staff and volunteers provide skilled and compassionate support for 50,000 families every year, right across the UK. We believe that every child deserves the fullest of opportunities to develop socially and emotionally during the critical early years, laying the foundations for their lifelong learning, health and wellbeing. By being alongside families in their homes and communities, Home-Start volunteers are brilliantly placed to empower parents and carers with practical knowledge and skills – helping them to overcome challenges and to create everyday moments of joy, hope, play and learning. 

By working in partnership with a range of organisations to build the awareness, knowledge and skills of volunteers and practitioners supporting families across the UK, we can help more babies and children have healthy, happy childhoods – and the best start in life.” 

Together, we’re working to ensure that every child gets the best start in life, and every parent feels confident, supported and capable of giving their children the strong foundation they need to thrive. 

Published:

Updated:

Author: Angela Bolton

Share this page
Manage Cookie Preferences