When I first came across Home-Start I felt lost and overwhelmed, in the depths of looking after 3 young children, all aged under five. I was parenting on my own and struggling with my mental health. It was a lot to deal with and I felt very isolated; looking after young children can feel so relentless. The isolation wasn’t helped by the fact I live in such a rural area and added to that, my family, although supportive, weren’t close by and able to help me on a regular basis.

I was referred to Home-Start by my Health Visitor, I didn’t really know much about them before that and to be honest, I was a bit nervous about allowing someone into my home as I’d only had family help me before. I wasn’t sure what to expect and I worried that whoever was coming to see me would judge me. However, I knew I wasn’t coping that well and my Mum told me to “take all the support I could get, whilst I needed it” – I knew she was right, so I agreed to a Home-Start volunteer. I remember before the first visit I cleaned my house from top to bottom, I was scared that the volunteer would come into my house and judge me. That feels funny now looking back, as that wasn’t the reality at all. As soon as my volunteer walked in she commented on how nice I’d made my home and my fears of being judged started to slowly disappear. As we chatted and got to know each other I found out she’d also had three children, who were now grown up, and it quickly became clear that she understood my feelings and knew what it was like bringing up three children so close in age. That was a massive help in itself, having someone in the house, an adult, who understood those feelings and really knew what it felt like to be juggling so much. I started to feel less alone.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the weekly visits, I think I thought my volunteer would come in and we’d just chat, and we did, we talked a lot, but we also got lots of things done. Very quickly I started to look forward to her visits each week and we accomplished so much in our time together. To some people it might not seem like a lot, but to me, the things we did together meant so much and made all the difference. I didn’t have much adult interaction during the week and it was lovely to have someone around that I could talk to and do things with. My volunteer helped me to get out of the house, I found that a daunting task on my own with three young children in tow. We went for walks with the children, did some gardening, she helped me take the girls swimming, and we went on some little day trips to the Cotswolds Farm Park and Batsford Arboretum. She got on with my children really well and it was nice to get out the house with another adult, it felt less daunting than when I was on my own and it slowly built up my confidence. Inside the house we got through lots of jobs. We decluttered, she helped me to organise my rooms and get on top of the laundry piles that felt out of hand, we also sorted through the toys and made some space. I look back and realise I was overwhelmed, especially with things like the laundry. My volunteer came in at the just the right time, ready to help and I was ready to accept the support. I remember there was a time when my washing machine and dryer broke and I had a massive build up of washing to get through and sort. I remember feeling so overwhelmed at the sight of it that I cried and just kept shutting the door on it. It felt like too big an issue to tackle on my own. My volunteer helped me to make a start, get it sorted and tackle it head on. I would never have made that start without her and would have continued to let it get out of hand. The relief afterwards of getting through it all and regaining some control was such a boost and made such a difference to how I felt. I still remember my volunteer saying to me “This will change, it gets easier” – and I really needed to hear those words, my children were all so young and I felt I was in a pit and I couldn’t get out, it felt so overwhelming. Because I’d built up a trusting relationship with my volunteer I believed in those words, and she was right. I no longer feel like I did and I’ve moved into a different phase of parenting, it still has its challenges but with two at school my days are different.

Back in those early days when I first met my volunteer I lacked confidence, felt isolated and overwhelmed. I struggled to have the confidence to make phone calls, take the girls out on my own, tackle the jobs that I knew I needed to do but couldn’t find the strength to tackle head on. A year or so on and it’s a completely different story. Now I feel positive, I feel happy and I know what I’m doing. The overwhelm has gone and now if things get too much, I know what I have to do to make things better. I recently took my children on holiday by myself, I drove them there on a 5 hour journey – something I would never have dreamt of before, I was scared even nipping out to Aldi back then! Before I had Home-Start I was always comparing myself to others, wondering if I was doing a good enough job as a parent– that’s stopped. Now I know that I’m a good mum. My volunteer has helped me to see that. I feel happier in myself and I have started to look forward. I am planning to go back to college and get some part time work in a childcare setting and although life isn’t perfect, it feels much more manageable. My volunteer has helped me get my life back together, I feel I can do anything now and I am finally parenting rather than just surviving. My relationship with my children is all that I wanted it to be.

Volunteer: Chrissie

The first family I visited had four children, the eldest being seven. I also had four children with a seven year age gap so I was in my comfort zone. The mum was extremely able and competent as a mum so it was more a case of just that little bit of additional help, particularly adult company and helping a bit with the children.

My second family was totally different experience; a single young mum with two children under three. I thought I had got it sussed what being a single mum was, because my husband worked abroad a lot, and my own daughter is a single mum with two little children. I thought I knew what the different issues were – but I didn’t at all.

This particular mum hasn’t had a supportive upbringing in a family environment and I didn’t realise beforehand what a huge impact that has had on her ability to parent her children. She did not feel loved by her mother and she needs the love from her two little children, so the whole thing of setting boundaries becomes vastly complicated.

I have done a lot of talking with Janice, my co-ordinator because it is out of my comfort zone and I have no experience of this kind of family situation. I have visited and played with her children when she did not know how to play with them. It is in situations like these that we don’t realise how much we learn to parent from the way our own parents and grandparents are with us as children.

I would say to someone who was thinking of volunteering – well go for it! The preparation training is very thorough and equips you for all sorts of situations, and the co-ordinators are always there if we are not sure what to do next.

Recently Trained Volunteer: Lynn

I have become a volunteer as I was at a stage in my career and my life where I was looking to do something else. My child is 12 and he has just started senior school so he does not need me as much. I went back to university, finishing last June, and I thought it was about I time I really put something back into the community in which I live.

I had done a psychology degree and it had got me interested in child development. I started to have a look around and went into Cotswolds Volunteers in Cirencester and they went through a number of opportunities with me. I went through quite a few things before I found Home-Start. What attracted me was the opportunity to work with families with children under five, but also the training that was being offered seemed to be a structured, supported, way of getting to be a really useful volunteer, as opposed to presenting myself to an organisation and just hoping for the best, which I know has happened to some of my fellow students.

On the course I met my other fellow volunteers and it was just terrific. Talk about the most amazing bunch of people, a huge cross section of backgrounds and life experiences. It was one of the best run courses I have ever been on – and I have been on lots of courses with my background in human resources! It was well structured, very professionally produced and the material was excellent. Also it was tailored by the inclusion of lots of local experiences and case studies (obviously anonymous) and speakers from local services and organisations. It was a great course and if you did miss bits it was structured so you could easily pick it up and Katharine and Janice were absolutely terrific at delivering it as well.

We are all already skilled as mums and dads and also have skills in lots of different ways that we don’t even think about….. nevertheless we have all got experiences. My little boy was very premature so I have got that experience of having gone through special care and I had not really realised that this personal experience could make a difference when talking to a Home-Start family.

I am a 39-year-old teacher with a grown up daughter (aged 20), an 11-year-old stepson and a two-year-old son. My mum died when I was 22 and my dad remarried and moved to the East of England soon after. In August 2016, I moved to the Cotswolds to be with my partner, who is the dad of my stepson and son. In 2018 we had the news that our baby (due March 2019) had abnormalities. My partner and I wanted different paths and outcomes for the pregnancy, and we stopped communicating effectively. It seemed impossible to discuss options in a sensible and helpful manner. From this point on, I felt very lonely, anxious and disappointed.

After baby arrived my anxiety and loneliness became unbearable. Early one morning while I was feeding, I googled ‘support for lonely mums in Cotswolds’ or something along those lines. Home-Start came up and I emailed the office asking for help, and received a response very quickly. Lynn came round to meet me, then arranged for a volunteer to start and invited me to Reconnect Group in Bourton. At first, my partner was reluctant for me to have help from a charity but once he met my volunteer a few times, he accepted she wasn’t there to judge or report back, and she then felt like part of the family. My partner would often say, “Shall we ask Trish about that?”, if we needed advice for anything.

It meant the world to me that someone would give up their time, voluntarily, to help me. Knowing I had Trish coming round meant I could plan things that I didn’t feel confident to do on my own – going into town to have my son’s feet measured or doing a supermarket shop. My son had so many rich experiences that I couldn’t have given him if it wasn’t for Trish being there. She gave me great advice and quickly became a friend – she was interested in my family and me and was totally non-judgmental.  I looked forward to her visits each week and always felt so ‘light’ afterwards – like a burden had been lifted. I felt less guilty for not doing much with my son, because I DID do things with him when Trish was there!

Trish taught my son lots of nursery rhymes which he still sings and helped his speech to come on a lot. She was totally unflappable in situations where I would ordinarily have panicked (my son having a tantrum in the Co-op car park, making lots of fuss and noise in the John Lewis coffee shop etc.).

I already miss Trish loads but I know we’ll keep in touch. She’ll always hold a very special place in my heart as she was paramount in my journey to being a less-anxious, more competent mum to all three of my children, but especially my youngest son. I will treasure the things we did and the memories we made with my son, which I could never have done without Trish.