Home-Start South East Dorset is to receive £3,000 from Care South’s Chairman’s 2020 Fund.

The organisation’s mission is to give children the best possible start in life, supporting parents to grow in confidence as well as strengthening and enjoying their relationships with their children, and widening their links with the local community. Through a network of over 600 volunteers, they are helping families struggling to cope with mental health issues, isolation, domestic violence, disability and financial hardship. Since its inception in 1995, it has supported over 3,500 local families and over 10,000 children.

The Chairman’s 2020 Fund was set up last year with the aim of supporting ‘Care South’s Friends’ and to benefit Care South employees, volunteers and community groups that provide a community service to the group’s care homes, care at home offices, clients and/or residents. Care South’s Talbot View care home team, based near Ensbury Park, unanimously nominated the charity to be a 2022 beneficiary.

The grant will be spent on providing specialist support to local disadvantaged young children and their families. It costs, on average, £800 to support a family with specialist 1:1 volunteer home-visiting support for six months, just £33.25 per week. So this grant will fund support to four families at a time of great need with the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbating issues and presenting more challenges and pressures within many family homes.

Simon Bird, Care South’s chief executive, said: “We are delighted to be able to support this incredible charity which is widely recognised by the team and residents at Talbot View, as well as the wider Dorset community. The work they do is important, and we are so pleased the grant will go towards helping even more families through some difficult times.”

Caroline Pope, community and corporate engagement manager at Home-Start South East Dorset, said: “We are so thankful to Care South for this generation donation. We have seen a huge rise in families asking for our help and huge gaps remain in local services providing early years and family support, meaning disadvantaged families need us now more than ever. As one parent said: ‘If I didn’t have Home-Start I wouldn’t have got through last year, I felt so alone. You were my lifeline’. We are working hard to keep up with demand and help the local families that need us, but we can’t do this alone. We need the support of volunteers and fundraising to make a real difference to local children, whose childhood can’t wait.”

There are many ways to support Home-Start South East Dorset which are available on its website https://homestartsoutheastdorset.org.uk/fundraise/. The organisation will also run volunteer training courses in May and September.