President Stella and members welcomed Mary Mallick to the November meeting. Mary is the Chair of Trustees of the Manchester branch of Home Start, which is one of 300 such groups supported by Home Start UK.
The aim of Home Start is to give ‘support and friendship for families’. The charity was started 40 years ago by Margaret Harrison, a voluntary youth worker in Leicester, who realised that it was necessary to give support to families as a whole rather than working with children in isolation.
Home Start gives a free service to families with children under 5 years of age by matching them with volunteers – each volunteer maintaining continuous contact with a specific family. It is desirable for volunteers to have some parenting skills and appropriate training and support is provided by three professional staff. Currently about 60 families are helped by Home Start Manchester, with referrals coming from a variety of sources.