Graham Allen MP to visit Home-Start Nottingham

26 January 2012

Graham Allen MP for Nottingham North visits Home-Start Nottingham to see first hand how the UK's leading family support charity encompasses the Early Intervention agenda.

Home-Start Nottingham forms part of the national network of Home-Start charities. Set up in 1973 there are now 327 local Home-Starts across the UK.

This local branch of Home-Start has been recruiting and training parent volunteers to support families who are struggling to cope, for 34 years. In the last year alone, their 117 parent volunteers have supported 165 families and 450 children.

In an ideal world Home-Start wouldn't be needed. But for many parents the pressures of family life are simply too much to cope with alone. Confidential and non-judgmental support is offered to families who are finding parenting difficult. It can be for a mum who is suffering post natal illness, a family who is suffering from poverty or social isolation, families suffering from a housing crisis, or where a child has an illness or disability.

Home-Start also works with families at the early stages of needing support, preventing families from reaching a crisis point, and requiring state intervention. This is what makes the Home-Start approach preventative and cost effective.

Ruth Consterdine, Network Funding Specialist, Home-Start UK said: "Most Home-Starts can support a family for less than £1,500 a year. By preventing a family crisis, Home-Start can work with parents so that their children do not end up in the care of local authorities therefore removing the need for costly statutory services to get involved further down the line. Home-Start's preventative approach makes us a cost- effective service on the front line of child protection."

When asked about his visit, Graham Allen said: "Home-Start Nottingham provides an essential support service to vulnerable families across Nottingham and has been dedicated to improving the lives and well-being of children and their families for many years. A central component of Home-Start Nottingham's service is to provide support early, before family problems or pressures evolve into deeper and more challenging forms of family crisis. This early intervention approach enables families to strengthen their own capabilities and gives them a vital source of sustained support. Given the difficult social and economic forces that are currently affecting families across the country, it is my hope that Home-Start will continue to steadfastly support vulnerable families in Nottingham."

Life is very difficult for many young families at the minute, and Home-Start is seeing an increase in families coming forward for support with more complex needs such as financial pressures, housing difficulties and relationship breakdown. But Home-Start can help, and in difficult times, make fragile families strong again. In the last year, almost a thousand children have been removed from a child protection plan where Home-Start was supporting the family.

One mum supported by Home-Start said: "If it wasn't for Home-Start I wouldn't be here anymore, and my children would now be in care."

Sue Fenton, manager of Home-Start Nottingham said: "We are delighted to welcome back Graham Allen MP and are very grateful to him for his genuine interest and support for the work of Home-Start Nottingham. Every Friday, in addition to our core activity of supporting and visiting families in their own homes, we run a Drop In and Crèche and Mr Allen will have the opportunity of speaking to our families and hear ‘first hand' what Home-Start Nottingham means to them."

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