What we do
Helping parents gain the skills, confidence and strength they need to nurture their children.
Home-Start Hertfordshire (HSH) supports families facing challenges such as post-natal depression, isolation, physical health difficulties, bereavement and many other issues. Each family is matched with a trained Volunteer Family Mentor, who visits the family home each week to provide support tailored to their needs. Through practical help and emotional encouragement, HSH empowers parents with the skills, confidence and resilience they need to give their children the best possible start in life.
Each year we support around 220 families and at any point in time our team of trained Volunteer Family Mentors are supporting up to 110 families.
The number of families referred to us for support, has not only increased in volume but also in complexity due to the long-term effects of Covid and financial pressures.
Our core support is:
- 1:1 support: we match a trained Volunteer Mentor with a family, to provide consistent weekly support. Support is tailored to the individual needs of the family.
- Family Group support: Groups are situated across the County. They support parents to build confidence and develop skills that will benefit them and their children.
In addition to our core services, we deliver projects which support emerging needs, subject to the availability of grant funding.
Areas covered by Home-Start Herts:
- North Herts
- Stevenage
- East Herts
- Dacorum
- St Albans
- Welwyn and Hatfield
Please note there are separate Home-Starts in Watford, Three Rivers area and Royston. You would need to get in touch directly to support in these areas.
Why is early intervention so important? Every week, we receive around 5 requests from families in crisis. Behind each request is a child and a family at breaking point and they need us to be here for them.
- Around 1 in 5 women will experience mental health problems during or after pregnancy, 70% will hide or underplay the severity of their illness, and suicide is the leading cause of direct maternal death within a year of having a baby.Poor maternal mental health has been linked with poorer cognitive and emotional development in their children.
- Children who are exposed to persistent poor parental mental health and poverty are at six times more risk of experiencing socio-emotional behavioural problems compared to their peers.
- Over a fifth of children aged 5 are overweight or obese. Children living in the most deprived areas are twice as likely to be obese than those in the least deprived areas.
- In 2022/23, around one in five children (21%) aged 2–2.5 years were found to have fallen short of their expected level of development.
- The cost to society of addressing the issues that might have been avoided through action in early childhood has been estimated to be £16.13 billion each year (estimates from 2018/19).
Academy of Medical Sciences’ Council (2024) “Prioritising early childhood to promote the nation’s health, wellbeing and prosperity”. For full report click here
Our Plan for the future
Our aspiration is to grow the impact that we have within our community by doubling the number of families that we currently support, by 2028.
To enable this to happen, we also have to ensure that have the necessary resources (staff and financial) required, to support 800 families.
We want to ensure that volunteering at HSH continues to be a positive, rewarding and valuable experience. Our aim is to ensure the service remains person centred, reflects the needs of individual families and is accessible to families throughout Hertfordshire. To do this we would need to attract, train, support and retain volunteers, staff and trustees over the next five-year period.
We have 4 Strategic Aims:
- Service Delivery – To develop our charity and broaden our offer to families through innovative projects, which build on our core programme.
- Partnerships and Profile – Ensure that we build new partnerships and raise our profile through networking, media and other awareness raising activities. In addition, maintaining and ensuring partnerships continue to be effective and well-resourced throughout the period of the Plan.
- Sustainable Future – Secure our future by achieving greater financial stability by widening our range of income sources and securing longer term funding.
- Well governed – To govern and lead a well-run, transparent, sustainable charity in line with good governance standards.
