Home-Start Local

Home-Start’s parent-to-parent support is the same the world over – and yet, everywhere it’s different.

Wherever we work, we offer parents friendly support from another parent. But of course, every community in which we operate is unique.

Home-Start supports parents who live in all kinds of communities, villages and cities, rich and poor, Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. We need to have volunteers who will understand the unique circumstances of each family, so wherever possible we recruit volunteers from the communities in which the families live.

Volunteer Training

Our volunteers are all people with a lot of parenting experience. They already know about bringing up children and about the community in which they live, but before we match them with families, we provide them with training and supervision.

The preparation we do with our volunteers is very important to us. Our volunteers will have to complete a training course over many weeks before they can begin visiting a family, and in that time we will look at a whole range of issues with them, from listening skills and the importance of non-judgemental support, to child safety, child protection and a look at what other services there may be in the area.

We also ensure that each volunteer has active supervision and has someone they can turn to if things get tough for them.

Local management

Our Home-Start schemes are based in the places in which they operate. They have volunteers from the community and are generally run by management committees from the community as well.

We now have a Board of Trustees from the business world, the professional world as well as some with NGO experience. Our board also represents the diversity of South Africa’s culture. As we meet together, doing the business of a National Body, we are learning – mainly from each other.” Trustee, Home-Start South Africa

Our schemes are set up by committed social entrepreneurs who see a need for family support in their own country and in their own communities. Although Home-Start International is based in the UK, in London, we do not send volunteers from the UK to work for Home-Start in other countries.

Our volunteers strengthen local families. Our schemes strengthen local communities.

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