We are a family support charity whose core ethos is to provide friendship, emotional support and practical help to families with at least one child under 5, who are struggling to cope with the strains and stresses of bringing up a family when things get tough.
We train parent volunteers to provide a free, confidential and non-judgemental home-visiting service on a weekly basis. We aim to:
Our aim in providing regular, informal support to families under stress is to prevent family crisis and breakdown, and to improve outcomes for future health and wellbeing in families experiencing difficulties, reducing the need for later, more expensive and less effective interventions.
Families are referred to us by health visitors, social workers, Children's Centres, home-school link workers or families may self refer. Problems which are faced by our families include, children in families experiencing domestic abuse or substance misuse; mothers suffering post-natal depression; children and/or parents suffering with disabilities or chronic or terminal illness; inadequate parenting or failure to implement boundaries; or multiple births.
We recruit and train parent volunteers to become home-visiting volunteers. Volunteers provide practical and emotional support by visiting families for 2-3 hours on a weekly basis. The type of support offered varies according to need but includes: befriending; emotional support due to loneliness, isolation and poor mental health of many parents; practical help with money management and budgeting; advice on parenting skills; and support to access community resources.
We have also recently started a Perinatal Mental Health project to better support mothers and their families who are suffering with perinatal mental illness. This includes additional training for our home-visiting volunteers in perinatal mental health, and running nurturing groups for mothers suffering with post-natal depression. The nurturing groups run on a weekly basis and are supported by paid staff and volunteers.
