Welcome to the first e-newsletter from Home-Start St Albans City & District. Keep up to date on our work supporting young families, the amazing work our volunteers do and find out more about how you can support us at www.homestartstalbans.org.uk
Our recent AGM heard from a young mother with a child with severe disabilities and also from their Home-Start volunteer. It was clear that the support the family receives is invaluable in helping her to cope.
Read about some of our families and their volunteers
Paul Elvidge replaced Heather Rutt as chair of the trustee board this October. With some uncertainty about levels of future grant funding, it's a challenging time for the charity...
Read more about our Chair
A new intake of 14 keen volunteers began their training with us in October and will be ready to start supporting families in January. Our thorough training is accredited by the Open College Network and feedback from our volunteers is very positive.
Read what our volunteers say about the training
We've set ourselves some big targets in the next three years. If you want to read about our priorities, you can download our business plan (and also last year's annual report) on our website.
Download our reports
Great fun was had by all at Homewood Road Church in November with £1200 raised. If you'd like to talk to us about how you can support us, please get in touch.
Read about the quiz and the businesses that supported it
Order your Christmas cards from our website
The Connect St Albans Dragons' Apprentice Challenge 2012 was recently launched at an event at St Columba's College. We're delighted that a team from St Georges School in Harpenden has chosen us to raise money for this year.
Read more about Dragon's Apprentice 2012
If you shopped there in November we hope you supported us by dropping your green token in the Home-Start St Albans box.
Read about Waitrose's community scheme
We were at the Harpenden Christmas festival on 27 November with our mascot Hope the Hippo (pictured above) selling our Christmas cards and puddings and telling people more about how we help local families.
Home-Start St Albans City & District is a registered charity that trains volunteers to provide support and friendship to local families with young children. Our volunteers visit families in their own home, offering friendship, practical help and emotional support. Our help may be needed because there is illness or disability in the family, a parent is isolated or suffering from post- natal depression.
Find out more about what we do, how to volunteer or support us at:
Sarah describes the support she receives from Home-Start as 'sanity saving'. Here she is with her daughter Sofia and our mascot Hope the Hippo at the Harpenden Christmas Carnival. Sarah's baby was born with Charge Syndrome which causes multiple disabilities. The family is supported by experienced volunteer Lin who has already helped several families since completing her training 18 months ago. With the charity since it began in 1991, Sally has seen it grow from supporting 5 families to 71 families last year. In 2011, 70 trained home visiting volunteers supported 111 local families with at least one child under 5 – that’s 254 children in total. Recently revamped and full of information about how we help local families and accept referrals. Visit our site to download our latest annual report and business plan and keep up to date on our fundraising activities.How we help
(Referring health visitor)
(Young mum)
(Young father bringing up 3 young children alone, after the sudden death of his partner)
(Mum of two boys with depression)
(Single mum with alcohol addiction)
(Mum with son with special needs)
(Mum of toddler and premature baby)Spotlight
Meet a family and their volunteer
Read more about how we support Sarah's familySpotlight on scheme manager, Sally Patterson
Read an interview with SallyDid you know?
Check out our website
www.homestartstalbans.org.uk