Home-Start Merton

Background information to the work of Home-Start and our new Rapid Response Service

! Fact !

FAMILY BREAKDOWN IS COSTING BRITAIN

£30 BILLION A YEAR

One in four children under five in the UK has difficult start in life, because their families are under pressure. Yet every child deserves the best possible start in life; to be loved, to play, to learn, and to grow in confidence. When this happens in a happy, secure family, a child’s health, schooling, and life prospects all improve.

Core Belief

Home-Start Merton believes that children need a happy and secure childhood and that parents play the key role in giving their children a good start in life and helping them achieve their full potential.

Our Mission Statement

Home-Start Merton exists to enable families experiencing stress or difficulties to meet the needs of their children under the age of five

We offer a unique service and recruit and train volunteers who are usually parents themselves to visit families at home who have at least one child under 5 and offer them informal, friendly and confidential support.

To help give children the best possible start in life Home-Start Merton supports parents as they grow in confidence, strengthen their relationships with their children and widen their links with the local community.

The Home-Start Approach

To Home-Start every family is special and we respond to each family’s needs through a combination of home-visiting support, group work and social events.

Like all Home-Start schemes we are firmly rooted in the local community that we serve. We are managed locally but supported by the national organisation. This offers direction, training, information and guidance to schemes and ensures a consistent and quality support for parents and children wherever they are.

Home-Start has proven, lasting, positive impact on the development of children and health and welfare of the family.

Our Vision

Home-Start Merton wants to see a society in which every parent has the support they need to give their children the best possible start in life.

Home-Start believes that parents play the key role in ensuring that children have a happy and secure childhood, but even the most dedicated parents can face challenges that prevent them doing all they want for their children. We support parents as they grow in confidence, strengthen their relationships with their children and widen their links with the local community.

Our committed and caring volunteers, who are usually parents themselves, offer friendship and informal support to parents with young children under five during difficult times in their lives. They visit families at home and are friendly, approachable people who are relied on and trusted by parents to listen without being judgemental, and to respect the needs of each individual family.

Home-Start – because every parent should have the support they need to give their children the best possible start in life

Home-Start works because it is simple- one parent supporting another parent through a difficult time for whatever that reason might be .This in turn has proven, lasting and positive impact on the development of their children and health and welfare of the family.

Read what some of our families say:-

“It felt hard to ask for help at first but once the volunteer started to visit,I wished I’d done it years ago.”

“She was my light at the end of a long dark tunnel.”

“I would have gone under without her.”

“My 5 children would definitely have been taken into care if I hadn’t had Home-Start support.”

RAPID RESPONSE SERVICE

We are looking for a post-holder with the skills needed to take forward our exciting new Rapid Response Service. Starting from the basis of our established volunteer delivered service we have been commissioned by the London Borough of Merton to deliver a new enhanced project in line with their current priorities for supporting families across Merton.

Our current service offers parent to parent support for vulnerable families with children age 0-5 and this is delivered via a trained home visiting volunteer, on a weekly basis. Our team of volunteers are supervised by our trained co-ordinators. With an increasing number of child protection cases coming our way we have come to recognise that in some cases where multiple concerns are deep rooted within the family, a faster response from our service is needed. Our project is the result of an emerging need to reshape our services by offering a flexible range of Home-Start intervention according to the level of family/children on the child protection spectrum. With our volunteers working in the home, we offer a protective factor and are ideally placed to identify quickly concerns which may indicate deterioration in a family’s circumstances.

Our Rapid Response Co-ordinator will join our staff team, working alongside our other Co-ordinators, as well as working in a strong partnership with children’s social care, and other agencies, for those families where child protection plans are in place. Key to this role will be the matching, support and supervision of a team of rapid response trained volunteers. Home-Start will play a full part in the Child Protection and CIN Plans by attending and submitting reports to Case conferences and being a member of Core Groups.

The new service will also include the development and implementation of our Home-Start Plus Service for families with CP Plans in place. Initial ideas are in development by our current staff team for this aspect of the programme and the new post-holder will be included in its on-going planning and delivery. The basis of this aspect of the project will be dependent on parents attendance at focussed workshops.

· Working with the family we will take a direct and focussed approach to finding solutions together to some of the on-going concerns that are repeatedly highlighted by professionals for families with child protection plans in place. i.e. day-to-day running of the home; managing challenging behaviour.

· Helping parents to consider the impact on their children’s lives if these difficulties are not addressed.

· Challenging negativity – promoting positivity.

Home-Start’s non-stigmatising approach to supporting families whilst working in close partnership with other agencies serves as a strong bridge between the family and statutory services. This is a particular strength of Home-Start for families who are resistant to statutory services entering into their lives. Volunteers and staff supporting them through this process helps to reduce their fear and anxiety and often misunderstanding of what lies ahead.

In 2010-11 Home-Start Merton supported:-

110 families which included

182 children under 5 and 65 over 5

VISIT OUR WEBSITE FOR A WEALTH OF INFORMATION ABOUT OUR WORK.