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“All the staff from Home Start are extremely knowledgeable and professional. The service is invaluable – it will be a ‘dark day’ when the support from our volunteer ends.”

A Home-Start family

When parents can’t cope children suffer, the impact of which can last a lifetime.
Help Home-Start Birmingham improve the life chances of local children.

Home-Start Birmingham reaches out to families who are struggling to cope, for a whole range of reasons from illness and disability to poor mental health and family breakdown.

In more recent years we have seen an increase in supporting families where poverty and deprivation is impacting on their ability to parent.

Birmingham has one of the highest rates of child poverty and deprivation in the uk, meaning the life chances of local children are affected greatly. We have to break the cycle of deprivation, so that future generations have the opportunity to flourish. We believe that every child has the right to a positive and fulfilling future.

Home-Start Birmingham prides itself on being able to react quickly and sensitively to the needs of the local families it supports. But as life gets harder for parents and children, the need for our support increases.

Please help us to invest in the future of our children. You can do this in so many ways:

Donate to our core Home-Start service

Home-Start Birmingham is one of the most cost-effective, front line services working with parents and children today. This is because our approach is volunteer led, and our model of support is Early Intervention, (stopping families from reaching crisis point, where costly statutory services are then required).

It costs on average just under £1,500 to support a family for an entire year, that’s £25 per visit from a Home-Start volunteer to visit a family whose not coping. This makes such a vital difference to a child’s life and its future life chances.

Your £25 donation will-

  • Ensure that a child is safe because her mum trusted their volunteer enough to tell her that her husband is abusing them.
  • Ensure that a child has food on the table because the volunteer showed his mum how to prepare a cheap but healthy meal.
  • Ensure that a child remains at home with its parents, instead of ending up in the care system.
  • Ensure that a child feels loved and secure because the volunteer has offered emotional support to her mum who is suffering poor mental health
  • Ensure a child is learning and ‘school ready’ because the volunteer encouraged mum to read and write with her.
  • Ensure that a child has a roof over his head because the volunteer supported his parents with housing applications.
  • Ensure a child can start school equal to her peers because the volunteer supported her parents in accessing a school uniform.
  • Ensure a child has a secure attachment with their dad because he has been supported to access counselling for Depression.
  • Ensure a child is clean and has a bed to sleep in because the volunteer helped their mum to organise their chaotic home.
  • Ensure that children whose parents simply aren’t coping are given the same life opportunities as their peers.

Donate to our volunteer training courses

For £250 we can train a new Home-Start volunteer to support a family who needs our help

  • By donating to our volunteer training courses, you will be supporting us to recruit and train new volunteers who then deliver Early Intervention support to families who aren’t coping. Early Intervention is a proven, cost-effective delivery model. It can prevent crisis and family breakdown. It can protect both a vulnerable child and a parent that’s suffering in silence. It paves the way for a mum or dad to parent their child in the best way they possibly can. It’s simple, if we don’t invest in Early Intervention we are not investing in our children.
  • Because Home-Start offers bespoke support to each individual family’s needs we help families avoid crisis as much as those who have already reached crisis point.

If you would like to find out more about our work and the impact a donation will have on parents and children please watch our Changing Futures film here

The Six Home-Starts across Birmingham are :-