Home Start

General information

We help families in Cambridgeshire with at least one child under 5, by providing a volunteer to visit their homes regularly for friendship and support.

Home-Start support helps to:

•Reduce family isolation and increase social support networks
•Strengthen parent-child relationships
•Improve parents’ emotional health and well-being
•Develop and improve parenting skills
•Improve the home environment
•Improve children’s health, well-being and development
•Increase access to health, education and community services.
Home-Start Cambridgeshire is firmly rooted in the local community, is funded locally and managed by a Trustee Board drawn from the local community.

Our umbrella organisation, Home-Start UK, provides valuable guidance on policy, training, information and personal support, enabling Home-Start Cambridgeshire to respond to local needs, but have the quality of service derived from agreed national quality standards. Home-Start Cambridgeshire helps to reconnect and reintegrate families with their community. Children, parents and the wider community all benefit from Home-Start Cambridgeshire's work.

Home-Start volunteers support families in a sensitive and flexible way. They share their time and friendship and work alongside parents, focusing on their strengths and offering families the opportunity to develop new relationships, ideas and skills. Supported parents are better able to engage in community life, to the benefit of themselves and their children.

Volunteers visit a family once a week, for approximately two hours.