Home-Start West Dorset

We are a local independent charity offering friendship, advice and practical support to families who live in West Dorset, Weymouth and Portland. We help parents, with a child under 5, discover or rediscover the joy of parenting. We are self funded and governed but work in partnership with Home-Start UK.

Home-Start believes that children need a happy and secure childhood and that parents play the key role in giving their children a good start in life and helping them to achieve their full potential.

Home-Start West Dorset is a local independent charity which has been set up to give friendship, advice and practical support to families who live in the West Dorset area and who have at least one child under the age of 5.

To provide our service we recruit and train volunteers who are parents themselves. The volunteers are provided with 24 hours of free accredited training in order to prepare themselves for a family support role.

The volunteer is then carefully matched to a family and will visit them in the family home for 2-3 hours a week.

Families can refer themselves to us as well as being referred by health visitors, GPs, social workers and other groups.

We will provide a support service to families who meet our criteria as long as we have an appropriate volunteer to help. The volunteers are supported by on-going back-up, review and training.

We have recently received a very positive Quality Standards Review from Home-Start UK.

We can help!

If you think Home-Start West Dorset could help your family why not find out more? You can either contact your GP, health visitor or children’s centre or you can contact us directly.

You don’t have to pay for Home-Start West Dorset’s help and it’s also confidential.

Our volunteers will respect your privacy and never forget that you have invited them into your home.

You can contact us through our contact us page or you can telephone the office on 01305 265 072.

We look forward to hearing from you. If you do decide to ask for support one of our Organisers, will get together with you, talk about your needs and carefully match you with an available volunteer.

If you are a health visitor, GP or health professional and would like to make a referral then please visit our referrals page

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