“Home-Start’s training has increased my knowledge and understanding of the nature of diversity across our families to enable me to deliver it within our volunteer preparation course.”

Home-Start coordinator

Scotland’s families are changing. So are their needs.

Last year we updated the diversity content of our core training course. We want all our family support workers to be confident and effective when working with families of all kinds.

We have been gearing up to meet the needs of more asylum seeking and refugee families.

We have responded to the different needs of multigenerational households.

We have helped tackle period poverty in Aberdeen by becoming one of the first sites for the Scottish Government’s trial provision of free sanitary products.

We have extended our reach to more small island communities.

We are experimenting with distant support using digital systems to reach more people in rural areas.

We are recognising that younger parents prefer text and instant messaging to phone calls and adjusting our approach in response.

We are also developing our approach to better meet the needs of dads and male carers.

Much of this work has been supported by the Scottish Government through our core funders the Corra Foundation. We are always looking for more development support. The challenge over the next few years will be to develop our digital and wider capacity to reach families whose lives can be transformed with a little extra help.

You can also help to support this work by sharing your experiences using social media. Follow us on Facebook @Home-Start UK Scotland and Twitter @HSScotland.