We are looking for adults with knowledge and experience as a mum, dad, grandparent or carer. You could be the vital support a family needs and make a big difference to their lives.
Some of our families may be dealing with a variety of difficulties including; post-natal depression, isolation, physical and mental health problems, bereavement, financial worries or relationship difficulties.
Your role will be to support them in the way that they want; this may include practical tasks such as getting out of the house, getting to appointments or helping to get organised. It could also involve offering advice and sharing experiences; or supporting parents through emotional issues.
Requirements of the role:
Our home-visiting volunteers are required to have:
- parenting or caring experience
- commit to our training programme
- undergo referencing and an enhanced criminal records check
- understand that support provided to families is completely confidential
- have a non-judgemental attitude and understand about the pressure of bringing up a family
Training provided:
All of our Home-Visiting volunteers are required to complete a volunteer preparation course, which is now available to complete online with one face-to-face session at the end.
Each candidate is interviewed for their suitability before starting this preparation course, allowing you to ask questions.
Our training is designed by family practitioners and experts in the industry and covers essential information including:
- The role of a Home-Start volunteer
- Values, attitudes and inclusivity
- Confidentiality
- Listening and communication
- Meeting the needs of families and children
- Safeguarding
Support provided:
We invest in our volunteers from day one, ensuring they are supported by a paid member of staff throughout their time volunteering with us through:
- Regular support and supervision sessions
- Paid expenses during training and while you support a family
- Additional training is offered to all volunteers on a regular basis both face to face and through Home-Start’s e-learning platform. Modules include An Introduction to Perinatal Mental Health, Parent-Infant Relationships and Child Development.
The process to become a home visitor:
- If you are thinking of being a home-visiting volunteer, we ask all our prospective home-visiting volunteers to complete and submit an application form to Home-Start North Wiltshire.
- Following receipt of the application form, we will make contact with you to arrange a meeting to discuss your application, Home-Start’s training, and what is involved in volunteering.
- You will then be asked to complete the ‘prep course’ before being matched with a family.
We are now able to offer the new online Volunteer Preparation training course with one face-to-face session to be held in our office in Pewsey.
Mileage and reasonable expenses can be claimed for this and all the work you undertake for us.
The role of a home visitor:
Once you complete the course and agree to act as a volunteer, we will ask you to support a family in their home (or outdoor visits) for a couple of hours once a week for up to 6 months. There is also some paperwork to be completed for our case records each month and annual safeguarding updates are mandatory.
If this doesn’t suit you, please get in touch as we can arrange for you to support our groups in Devizes, or Tidworth. We are about to offer a group in Melksham from June with Trowbridge, commencing later this year.
Alternatively, you might like to support families remotely by performing a keep-in-touch role or help with our community engagement work and fundraising team which only requires a short induction. You might prefer the role of a trustee.
The commitment:
Given the amount of training involved and the cost, we do ask volunteers doing Home Visiting to commit to supporting families with us for at least 1 year. We do recognise that you will want to take time off for holidays and other events and that is fine but our families need volunteers that will commit to supporting them regularly for months at a time. So please think carefully about what you can offer.
How to register your interest:
Having read all the information, if you are interested in volunteering, could you return the completed volunteer application form to me via email – preferred - or by post.
We are happy to provide a hard copy of the relevant documents in the post if you prefer. If so please contact us to provide your postal address.
Please do call if you have any concerns or questions.