If you are not close enough to qualify for our support, we’d still like to try to help a little by advising of other organisations who might be able to.  Contact us here.

The only people who will know are you, staff at Home-Start, your volunteer and the person who referred you to us.  We will discuss with you which authorities, if any, you may be involved with and discuss any possible need to share this information with them.  All information is treated in the strictest confidence, except where a child is perceived to be at risk of harm.  Please see our privacy notice for further information.

Home-Start support is completely free.  You will not have to pay for your support from Home-Start.

We are a charity and raise funds to be able to support parents and children.  See the Fundraising page of our website to view our current principal funders.  Also, see our latest annual report to find a list of all our generous supporters.

Since 1973 Home-Start has been tailor-making our support to help families with multiple births, where there is bereavement or illness, disability or addiction, or where there is mental ill-health, or money or housing problems.  In most cases Home-Start helps where families feel isolated and have no local support.

Read comments left by some of the families Home-Start Spelthorne has supported.

We won’t be able to help:

• If all our volunteers are already supporting other families.
• If there is not enough funding to train more volunteers.
• If you have a very complex set of problems and we don’t have a really experienced volunteer available.
• If you need more support that our befriending volunteers can give – in which case we will always recommend other kinds of support for you and put you in touch if we can.
• If there is some reason our volunteer would not be safe supporting you.

Generally, we would stop supporting you:

• When your youngest child turns five or goes to school full time.
• If your circumstances have got better and you feel you can cope, and want to free up your volunteer to help another family.
• If you decide you no longer want our support.
• If your volunteer’s circumstances change and they have to stop volunteering.  If this happens we will ask if you would like to be supported by another of our available volunteers.
• If, for any reason, our volunteer is no longer safe coming to your home to support you.

Lone parents, married couples, unmarried couples, grandparents caring for grandchildren, step parents; adoptive parents, multiple births, families where a parent is in the armed forces, families where a parent is in prison, families where social care or other agencies are involved, wealthy families, families where money is tight, for any gender, ethnicity or asylum/immigration status…and many others in different situations.

If you want to take your worry on to a formal complaint, you should ask to have a copy of our Home-Start Spelthorne complaints policy.  Such a complaint would be handled independently by one of our Trustees who will follow national guidelines for investigating and making a decision.

Because of the legal and charitable structure of Home-Start (each Scheme is an independent charity) Home-Start UK is unable to make decisions on complaints about local Home-Start Schemes.

To find out about how to support Home-Start Spelthorne see the Volunteering pages of our website.

Alternatively, contact our office directly.

We want our Home-Visiting volunteers to be local people who have parenting experience and who genuinely want to support families who need help.  Without these volunteers we would not be able to deliver our service.  We provide training for new volunteers which lasts for approximately 40 hours; usually one session a week, spread over eight weeks.  At the training sessions there will be an opportunity to ask questions and meet existing volunteers.  Following the training, and having been matched to a family, each volunteer continues to be supported by our staff and they will meet up regularly to ensure all is going well.