Home-Start South Yorkshire

Home-Start works across South Yorkshire to support struggling families. For parents dealing with isolation, unemployment, domestic violence, disability, mental health issues and much more, Home-Start is a lifeline.

A recent grant of £4,981 from the Young People into Employment Fund for South Yorkshire has funded a new learning programme for young parents under 25 in Rotherham, covering literacy and numeracy skills. The courses aim to help parents to gain employment more easily.

The courses were begun in response to consultations with young parents currently being supported by Home-Start who are facing barriers to finding secure employment.

There’s no way you can get a job if you are always worried about your kids and how things are at home. I want to work but I can’t do it until things are right at home

A mother speaks on her struggles 

In the last year, Home-Start has worked with 79 parents under 25 who are out of work but need a job.

Home-Start is training 12 volunteers to deliver the programme and to provide specialist support.

The learning courses are so far going really well. We are currently ensuring that the courses are valuable to parents and beneficial.

We have been training our volunteers who undertake home visits in all the skills they need to support the families we work with. The accredited training ranges from listening and communication skills to dealing with domestic violence in the home and confidentiality protocols. This now includes teaching literacy and numeracy skills

The project is ongoing so we don’t have the full outcomes yet but currently 14 parents are benefitting from the learning programme. We aim to have all of the parents involved feeling more capable and confident applying and gaining employment and able to manage work and home life, by the end of the project

Jack Scott, Chief Executive of Home-Start

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