From Struggle to Strength: How Home-Start Supports Families and Children in Portsmouth
As poverty figures reach an unacceptable new height, the time is now to support to the most vulnerable among us.
Recently, it was revealed that nearly a quarter of children in Portsmouth are living in relative poverty. Child poverty poses a range of developmental threats to children, such as increased risks to health, limited educational opportunities and restricted social development.
These are the issues Home-Start Portsmouth intends to tackle head-on, by providing welfare support to families in Portsmouth who are struggling to provide care for their children amidst difficult circumstances.
“Home-Start Portsmouth supports vulnerable parents to build a safe, nurturing and stimulating family life to ensure that their children develop and thrive,” the voluntary organisation shared, a mission which has remained at their core for the past thirty years.
“Our families face many difficulties — social isolation, limited access to local services, chaos of addiction, poor mental health debt and financial difficulty… which affects parents’ ability to support their children’s wellbeing.
“As a result, children suffer and can tend to be very isolated, even within their own community, which can be almost impossible to improve without long-term, external support.”
Providing family-orientated services is an efficient means of early intervention, which seeks to minimise the effects a challenging upbringing can have on a child's development, and can help families to regain structure and grow together during hard times.
Home-Start offers emotional and practical support to families in Portsmouth through their trained home-visiting volunteers, and offers regular term-time Stay-and-Play groups, where parents can spend time with their children in a safe, stimulating environment.
Those who wish to support Home-Start can, by volunteering with a group, participating in fundraising activities or sponsoring a trip for its families.