Pears Foundation

The early years have a huge impact on children’s futures. Research consistently shows that good early childhood development has a direct positive impact on a child’s long-term outcomes. But parenting isn’t easy and sometimes families face challenges that they struggle to manage alone.

Home-Start is a local community network of trained volunteers and expert support helping families with young children through their challenging times. Its founding philosophy is that support is best given in the home, where it can be shaped to the needs of the family. Parents who get support and friendship from another parent will be better equipped to cope with the many difficulties life can bring and to give their children the best possible start.

From its origin over 50 years ago in Leicester, there are now around 175 local, independent Home-Starts working across the UK and the model has been replicated internationally across 22 countries.

At the heart of each Home-Start’s work is home visiting volunteer support. Across all four nations of the United Kingdom, thousands of home-visiting volunteers support over 59,000 families and 76,750 children a year.

Families struggling with post-natal depression, isolation, physical or mental health issues, financial problems, bereavement and many other challenges receive the support of a trained volunteer who spends around two hours a week with them in their home, helping them cope with the stresses and strains of life and giving them the skills, confidence and strength they need to nurture their children. This could be help to establish routines, attend appointments, play and read with children or manage their money, or even just a friendly pair of ears or a chance to have a break. Local Home-Starts across also support families in groups, hold day trips and Christmas parties and help access local services.

We have supported Home-Start UK since 2020 with a mixture of support for Home-Start UK and funding, distributed through the central charity, for local Home-Starts. It was one of the nine recipients of our DCMS Community Match Challenge funding to support local communities during the Covid-19 pandemic and one of six recipients of our DCMS Volunteering Futures Fund which supported them to develop and test ways to improve their volunteering model. In 2022 we gave £1million to Home-Start’s Breathing Space Fund to support the network to manage a huge increase in demand due to families struggling with the cost of living crisis.

At the heart of Home-Start’s work is its network of volunteers that are standing by families and helping them improve outcomes for their children. Home-Start not only improve the lives of parents and children, they build connections and strengthen communities across the UK. This is why we are investing a further £750,000 in Home-Start’s Compassionate Communities programme which brings Home-Starts from across the country together to innovate ways to recruit, support and retain this team of incredible volunteers.