Home-Start North Wiltshire

There for parents when they need us most,
because childhood can't wait

About Us

What we do

We support families who are going through difficult times, helping to prevent family stress becoming family crisis.

Some challenges families might be experiencing include:

Feelings of isolation or loneliness
Being new to the area
Poor mental health, including depression and anxiety
Low self-esteem/confidence
Poor physical health and/or disability
Difficulty managing children’s behaviour
Financial struggles
Parental conflict, or relationship breakdown
Bereavement
Affected by imprisonment of a loved one
Juggling the needs of twins, triplets (or more!)

Parent and Child Groups

Our parent and child groups are designed to offer extra support to parents who would like to grow in confidence, make new friends, reduce isolation, or improve their emotional wellbeing and mental health.

They also provide valuable opportunities for children to meet and play with other children.

We offer:

A calm, supportive environment
Free refreshments and children’s activities
Volunteers to help, chat and play
Help getting there (transport/support)

Volunteer home visiting

Our trained and supervised volunteers visit families for 2-3 hours every week, in their own homes, normally for around six to nine months.

Volunteers can offer a range of practical help and emotional support. Support is tailored to need, and as individual as the families we help. It may include:

Helping families get out in their local community (such as to the park, to a playgroup, or just to ‘get out of the house’)
Helping families adjust to the arrival of a new baby
Supporting with routines
Entertaining children, to free up the parent/carer
Demonstrating ways to play and connect with children
Being an extra pair of hands
Simply just being there to listen

Our volunteers offer no judgement, just compassion and kindness.

Home-Start volunteers come from all walks of life. They all live in the local area, are usually parents or grandparents themselves, and all understand the challenges of family life.

We carefully match every family with the volunteer with think will be best suited to meeting their needs. Support focuses on building the family’s strengths, confidence, and resilience.

Alongside their volunteer, each family also receives help from a Family Support Organiser, who works alongside them to assess their unique needs, and plan and review their support package.

We endeavour to access telephone interpretation support where necessary for families who do not speak English

Watch two of our Family Support Organisers, Caz and Sally, explain more about our volunteer home visiting service in the video below:

“Home-Start raises self-confidence, improves social networks, reduces difficult behaviour on the part of the child and improves mental and physical health” – Every Child Matters Government Green Paper.