Scheme Manager’s Report

Over the past year Home-Start Runnymede has supported 69 families, some of whom are receiving long term support. 55 of these families received home-visiting and the remaining 14 have received group support. 220 children have benefited from Home-Start help during the year.  Our Volunteers have shown real dedication in often difficult circumstances and have offered care, kindness, friendship and support to local families struggling with many different and sometimes complex problems.  We rely so heavily on their generosity of time, commitment, flexibility and ability to relate to the families and without them we would not be able to provide such a high quality of service.

Our events this year have been particularly good.  We have managed to fit in 8 hall and parkplay events at Addlestone Community Centre and various local parks, and also an outing to Bockett’s Farm, complete with 3 coaches! As part of the Big Tea Party event run by Home-Start UK, we held our own Teddy Bear’s picnic at Chertsey Nursery.  This was extremely well supported and the weather was, for once, quite kind.  Christmas, as usual, was the highlight of our year with the last appearance of Santa’s Helper, Fairy Betty as she has now retired as a volunteer.  We will have to look for a replacement for Betty – but her white tights will be hard to fill!

We now have 3 Children’s Centre’s open in our area, one at Chertsey Nursery School, one at The Haven in Thorpe Primary School and one in Sayes Court School in Addlestone.  We are pleased to be building close links with all three centres and are directing our families to use these centres and the fantastic facilities and courses that they offer.  In turn, they are letting us know of any struggling families so that we may contact them to offer some support.

During this year we have, for the first time, run two Volunteers’ Preparation courses.  This has meant that any Volunteers who missed the September intake, did not have long to wait for their course in the new year and we felt that we were able to keep the interest of those waiting in this way.  We hope to replicate this in the years to come and hopefully build on the numbers of Volunteers available to support families.

Volunteer support meetings continue to be run approx 6 weekly, with some involving training and some purely as support groups.  Karen from Chrysalis Parenting has helped us with Stress Management, Bedtime Routines, and Positive Discipline amongst others.  These courses were run so that Volunteers could disseminate the information they learned to their families, as and where necessary, and also use the information for themselves too.  Karen continues to be a wonderful trainer and we hope to learn from her expertise in the future too.  We trialled a course in Makaton, a signed language system with babies and difficult to reach children in mind, run by one of our own Volunteers, but unfortunately there did not seem to be enough interest to run a full course, but have this in mind for the future.

As ever, funding remains an enormous challenge.  With the recession really biting now, we are finding it increasingly difficult to raise the money needed to keep our Scheme operating.  Our sponsors and donors are still our lifelines and we are so grateful for all of the support they provide for us in the way of grants and donations as well as gifts and hampers.

I can only thank everyone involved in Home-Start Runnymede from the bottom of my heart.  It is a pleasure to know you and I am continually humbled by the hours of dedicated service you give to support our families.  Once again I will say that together we will work towards strengthening family ties, supporting families through difficult times and hopefully creating a better and more caring world for our children to grow up in.

Scheme Manager