About Us
Across the UK more than 15,000 Home-Start volunteers visit families at home each week, supporting parents in situations as diverse as isolation, bereavement, multiple births, illness, disability or who are just finding parenting a struggle. They provide non-judgemental practical and emotional support and help build the family's confidence and ability to cope. Home-Start runs more services and has more volunteers supporting more families than any other family support charity in the UK.
Home-Start Portsmouth is an independent charity that is funded locally and managed by a board of trustees. We were established in 1992 and have been going from strength to strength ever since. Last year, 100 families were visited by Home-Start Portsmouth volunteers and 70 families attended our groups.
We help to increase the confidence and independence of families by:
- Visiting families in their own homes to offer support, friendship and practical assistance
- Reassuring parents that their childcare problems are not unusual or unique
- Encouraging parents' strengths and emotional well-being for the ultimate benefit of their children
- Trying to get the fun back into family life
Our volunteers, who have parenting experience themselves, can offer:
- Precious time for listening and talking
- Help with the children
- A break for parents
- Practical help and reassurance
- A chance to meet other parents in the same boat
- Support to use local services and resources
How You Can Help
Volunteering
If you could think you could give 2-3 hours a week to be a Home-Start Portsmouth Volunteer, visit our Volunteers page or Contact us. Parents ask for Home-Start's help for all sorts of reasons:
- They may feel isolated in their community, have no family nearby and be struggling to make friends
- They may be finding it hard to cope because of their own or a child's physical or mental illness
- They may have been hit hard by the death of a loved one
- They may be really struggling with the emotional and physical demands of having twins or triplets - perhaps born into an already large family
Raising Funds
It’s
completely FREE to register and you won’t pay a penny more for your shopping
when you use the easyfundraising site. In fact you can even SAVE MONEY as many
retailers offer discounts, special offers and even 'e-vouchers' exclusive to
easyfundraising.
Search
the Web and Raise Funds
You
can also raise funds when you search the Web - with easysearch, a search engine
with a difference!
When
you search the Web with easysearch instead of Google or any other search
engine, you’ll raise funds for us with every search you make! Just like
easyfundraising it’s completely free to use and if you make just 10 searches a
day, you could raise £20 a year - or more - for us, just by switching to
easysearch.
What’s
more, easysearch is a 'super' search engine that combines the strengths of
several search providers together - Yahoo!, Bing, Ask.com and many more.
easysearch tracks down the most relevant and accurate results from across the
Web, which means you’ll find what you’re looking for quickly and easily every
time - all in one ‘easy’ search.
Check out our unique easysearch page at http://homestartportsmouth.easysearch.org.uk and use it every time you search the Web.
| Make a Donation |
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If
you would like to make a one off donation or to organise a sponsored
event, you can use the Just Giving website; see link above.
