Home-Start Reading is an independent charity and part of a network of over 200 Home-Start schemes across the UK. We have been supporting families in Reading since 1984 and remain the only charity in Reading that specialises in providing a trained volunteer home-visiting service, which is free to families who are struggling to cope for a variety of health, wellbeing or social reasons.
We believe that parents hold the key to their children’s future. By working alongside families who are struggling, we help parents become confident so that they are able to support their children to reach their full potential.
Our small team of staff recruit, train and supervise volunteers with parenting experience to provide practical and emotional support to families on a weekly basis in their homes. We offer in depth support, which is highly responsive to the individual needs of the family on a week by week basis. In addition, we run Family Groups in two of the most deprived areas of Reading, bringing parents together, with their children, in a safe and nurturing group setting where they can access support and develop parenting skills. We also run a number of specific projects that provide targeted support for groups of parents with particular needs – such as mental ill health following the birth of their child, and readiness for nursery or school.
All our families have at least one child under the age of 5. Almost three quarters of the families we support live in areas of Reading rated as high or very high on the Deprivation Index.
Many of our families are battling complex issues, including social needs (housing, finance, isolation, and language barriers), emotional issues (bereavement, family breakdown, and domestic abuse), and poor health (physical or developmental disability, chronic or mental illness and/or a life limiting condition). In recent years we have noted a significant increase in the number of families affected by disability, illness and poor mental health.
Referrals for support come from families themselves, other voluntary organisations and statutory agencies (e.g. Health Visitors, Children’s Centre workers and Children’s Services.
All our services are delivered free of charge, and all our funding is sourced from grants and donations. We do not receive any statutory funding
We train our home-visiting volunteers and they can spend up to a year with a family, visiting every week for a few hours, as a sympathetic and knowledgeable friend, giving both emotional and practical support with whatever issues they face.
The volunteer might go with a parent to look after the child(ren) while they are having a consultation at the hospital, the GP, an older child’s school, legal or financial advice services; she will help establish routines for eating, sleeping, toileting, taking exercise, and by example will model ways of dealing with a child’s difficult behaviour or ways of playing with the child to encourage sociability and readiness for nursery or school. Our volunteers encourage fun, closeness and warmth as a background to everything for the whole family, this can include day trips with other families or days out within the family.
The volunteers are backed up by a small team of paid staff who can intervene in difficult situations, advise on other sources of help and advice, and generally ensure that the family’s needs are being fully addressed.
For some families, facing very similar problems, but hard for the statutory children’s services to reach, we run two Family Groups every week. Our playleaders draw in the parents to take part in structured play activities that help the children with their language and communication and their social development and especially, just to find that they can have fun with their children. Families feel comfortable in the Groups, where they know they will not be ‘looked down on’ and our staff empower them to manage their children’s health and wellbeing, and to build supportive friendships with other families.
We also fill a noticeable gap in support for women with postnatal depression, loneliness or anxiety during the first two years after the birth of a child. We run confidential, relaxed and friendly ‘Mums in Mind’ courses, over 6 weeks, combining craft and conversation, together with information about postnatal mental illness and the help of trained staff in understanding difficult feelings and developing techniques for coping better. Supporting the improvement of the mental health across the whole family through a range of in person and online free services, starting with mums and dads to be who may be feeling anxious, postnatal depression courses ( Mums in Mind) and parenting skills for new parents has always been a priority for the charity.
