Home-Start Runnymede has undergone several changes during the last year. Liz Fox, Scheme Manager since its inception, retired and I took over on 9th July 2007. Liz was (and still is) a hard act to follow but with the continued support, help and encouragement of Chris, the Scheme Organiser, and Fiona, our wonderful administrator (where would I be without them?) I am determined to carry on supporting our volunteers and our families with the same enthusiasm and integrity.

Chertsey Nursery, where we are based, changed its name and image during this year, to become Chertsey Children’s Centre. We are very fortunate to be part of this change and are seeing the Sure Start policies springing into life, with half term activities for families as well as support and help 5 days per week. They run courses, activity events and many other lifelines for harassed parents, and they help to promote Home-Start where they see the need too!

Also in January, we opened our very own Parent and Toddler Group here at Chertsey Children’s Centre on Wednesday mornings, especially for our Home-Start families. It is an opportunity for parents and their toddlers to get together, play, have coffee and a snack and really get to talk to other parents in the same boat! Our confidentiality policy also applies in the group, and all the parents respect this and treat each other kindly.

A further change was in January 2008 when the corporate logo altered to the much more modern one that you now see everywhere, in orange and raspberry! We think it looks great and is much more eye catching and hopefully it will help us to raise our profile in Runnymede.

In September we ran our Volunteer’s Preparation course and had 11 prospective new volunteers start the course, with all 11 being placed in the early part of 2008! This has helped to swell our ranks, but with the number of families needing support continuing to grow, we will always need to increase our volunteer numbers. We are spending quite some time on volunteer recruitment and should the need arise will run 2 courses per year in the future.

As always, funding is a huge challenge and we continue to spend much of our time looking at charities/funds to whom we can apply. Our sponsors and donors are our lifelines and we can only thank them from the bottom of our hearts for their kindness and generosity in helping us to help the families in our area who are in need. Proctor and Gamble continue to be a huge support to us by donating everything from money for us to hampers and toys for our Families.

I think I speak for us all when I say that we look forward to the year ahead. We all appreciate the importance of families and recognize that without them, our society will falter, so we will continue to work towards strengthening their bonds, hopefully creating a better world for the children to live in.

Liz Fox, Scheme Manager