🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Home-Start Spelthorne

Gareth Davies: 00:00:44

Hello and welcome to the Sheppertonian. I'm Gareth and this is the local podcast bringing you stories, voices and events from in and around Shepperton.

Before anything else, I hope you're managing to stay cool out there. It's been a proper scorcher, isn't it? And if you've been anywhere near the river trying to catch a breeze, you're not alone.

I think half of Shepperton had the same idea.

A quick thank you as always to the local businesses supporting the Sheppertonian through the Business Club. Partners, the Ferry Coffee Shop, Meon Media and the Sound Boutique, and business member Island Motors. Their backing is what makes it possible to keep telling stories like the one you're about to hear. So thank you one and all.

And a quick word for anyone who's been thinking about getting their business listed but wasn't sure where to start. There's now a website listing option for just £10 a month.

It's the simplest way to get found on the site, so head to the Business club page at thesheppertonian.uk to find out more.

And I also wanted to say a proper thank you to everyone who came along to the last Shepperton Business Connect, co hosted as always, with the brilliant nikibakes at the Ferry Coffee Shop. It was great to see so many familiar faces and a few new ones too. That's exactly what these evenings are for.

So thank you for showing up and being part of it.

Gareth Davies: 00:02:04

And if you're a business owner in or around Shepperton, the next one is on Thursday, August 20th at the Ferry Coffee Shop between 5 and 7pm. It's an informal event, but a great chance to meet other business owners in the area.

es across this area since the: 1990

To mark it, I wanted to bring together three voices who each see it differently. A mum who's been supported, a volunteer and a member of staff.

Not three separate interviews, but one story about what it actually means for a stranger to show up and become part of a family's week. It starts for most families with overwhelm. Meet Hannah.

Hannah: 00:02:52

The first Home-Start volunteer that I had was Wendy. She came into our lives just after my mum had passed away. I'd been made redundant and my son had just received an autism diagnosis.

So it was like a real kind of minefield of kind of a new world, basically. And it was just really overwhelming.

And Wendy came into our lives at a point that I just needed kind of grounding and like refocus and navigating sort of through a new world. And so for that period it was amazing because she recently had a bereavement as well.

So we were kind of kindred spirits of kind of working through it, the grief process and swapping stories.

I was so, so desperate for help, but I just needed almost like another adult to guide me through it and just kind of have a way of resetting and a refocus so that I could pull myself back from like the overwhelm, really.

Gareth Davies: 00:04:06

Debra Dennehy is the family support coordinator for Home-Start Spelthorne.

Debra Dennehy: 00:04:10

A really big challenge for families now is isolation. Not just for families where they're new to the area and they don't know anyone. I think having a child, having a baby is incredibly isolating.

And if you don't have family around you, even more so.

But then there's also, I think, the way we're going where probably 30 years ago you could go out and pop to the shops and you might chat to a few people. I remember, I mean, my daughter's nine and I would try and go out every day when she was little and it would just be popping to Sainsbury's probably.

And now you would probably use the self service tools or a screen or an app or, you know, something like that.

More and more we are moving towards I, you know, when I go to the leisure centre, I don't usually interact with anyone because I book my ticket online and I scan my QR code and I go and I swim and I come back. So those little interactions during the day, you're not having those. And then if you don't have other people around you, people turn to the internet.

And whereas a person, a human being might say to you, you might say, I'm worried about this. A human will say to you, I've experienced that, my daughter did that, my baby did that, and they've turned out fine.

What you'll probably get from the internet is you should be doing this, you should be doing that. And that I think is a really big difference, which is having an impact on the feelings of isolation and people's mental health ultimately.

And we do get a lot of referrals for families. Nearly everyone we work with is isolated in some way.

Gareth Davies: 00:06:01

It takes a village to raise a child. That's the phrase Debra keeps coming back to. And it's the thing she says hasn't changed in 30 years. Even as everything around it has.

The question is how families actually find that village when it isn't already sitting on their doorstep.

Hannah: 00:06:15

Initially it was through my friend's sister called Nicky. She works quite closely with the charity. And initially I did feel a bit apprehensive, like I was almost a bit like there were families that maybe needed more support than I did.

But the more I got to know about it, the more sort of stigma of asking for help was removed.

Debra Dennehy: 00:06:41

It does happen that it's word of mouth and there's another family I'm working with at the moment and they were told about Home-Start through another family that I'd worked with. But word of mouth isn't going to be enough for us to keep going. So most families are referred to us. So that would be through health visitors.

It could be through nursery schools, GPs, but that happens less. So we get quite a lot of referrals from the Perinatal Mental Health team and the Children With Disabilities team.

So those are some ways people would have heard of us.

In terms of the wider population having heard of us, I think we do really rely on our referrers and we do notice, I think it was probably in lockdown. When families aren't being seen by services, our referrals then go down and that's really difficult.

We do accept self referrals and so I will use social media to promote the fact that we accept self referrals and put that into local groups and things like that. I love self referrals because the service works best when people are really ready and looking for that support.

And I've worked with a few people who've referred themselves for support and when they ask for it, they then really engage with it well and take it on board. And when that volunteer is with them, they're really open to making change. And it's always really lovely to see a self referral come through.

Gareth Davies: 00:08:13

Issy has been a volunteer for a while now. I asked her how she heard of Home-Start Spelthorne.

Issy: 00:08:19

I'd been thinking for a little while about volunteering and then actually doom scrolling, as we all do on Facebook, I stumbled across an advert for Home-Start.

I'd known somebody years and years ago who worked in the Home-Start office, but had never really known in all honesty what she did or what they were about. So when this advert came up, have you got two to three hours a week to help support families in need?

I reached out to the office to find out a bit more about it.

Gareth Davies: 00:09:33

Once that first connection is made, whatever form it takes, what happens next is the part people find hardest to imagine. A volunteer, a stranger in your home every week. So what does that actually look like?

Hannah: 00:09:46

It was almost like having an aunt or a mum there. She was learning about autism with me.

We were swapping stories and also just being honest, like, Wendy would say to me, or, I'm having a bit of a rubbish day today. How are you coping this week?

And just having that adult conversation whilst I could put her in the room with the children and I could go off and just clean the kitchen quickly. Or just like Life Admin.

At the period that Wendy was with us, I was going to courses about autism.

And so everything that I would learn that week, I would see her the next week and I'd show her my notes and she'd bring, like, newspaper clippings about research and things like that.

Issy: 00:10:36

So one of my families was a mum who'd fairly recently moved to the area. Young children. She'd fled her home due to domestic violence and had to be relocated as far away as possible from her situation.

And she knew nobody, she had no friends, no family in the area had put in, been put into temporary accommodation. So obviously also didn't know how long they would be in a stable place for. And she just really needed to know the area.

So our first few visits were just getting to know each other, getting to know the children, and then we just started to go out for walks.

I will always remember one of our first couple of trips out where we just walked up to the river and she had absolutely no idea that she lived next to the River Thames, that obviously we're blessed to be in a really beautiful area and there's so much you can do by the river with the children.

We played poo sticks, you know, we explored the island and just, yeah, just had a walk around and just seeing the joy on her face of realising, wow, there's such a beautiful place here that's free to explore with the children, was really great.

Hannah: 00:11:42

Charlie, my youngest, he's a lovely surprise, but he was a real surprise in an already chaotic environment. And we had a lady called Sue that was one of the volunteers and Harry, my middle child, had been up all night. He hadn't gone to sleep at all.

Charlie had intermittently woken up and she just opened the door and she said, right, do you want to just go and have a relaxing bath and I'll stay down here with Charlie? And that's all that I needed, to just have that reset, like, just have 10 minutes where I wasn't Mum.

Issy: 00:12:17

We've all been in a part of a situation that one of our families is going through. So we've all had small children who have had a restless night and we've been tired and we're thinking, I haven't got the energy to get through today.

That's the position the mum has been where she said, I just need to go and have a lie down for an hour. And I say, yeah, great, I'm with the kids. You have the beauty of going to have a lie down for an hour.

So I think as mums and dads as well, because dads can volunteer too. We've been through that situation.

So actually, your experience you've got as a mum has already 99% equipped you for what Home-Start needs, for what the family needs.

Debra Dennehy: 00:12:57

Families don't just get to the top of the list and get matched with the first available volunteer. It's all about matching the right volunteer to the right family.

When people do come forward as volunteers, we learn about them, get to know them, and they might have restrictions, like they can only do Mondays or they're allergic to cats, or they only want to cover a specific area, or they don't drive and they can't do school holidays. And so that has to come into it as well.

But we'll also have volunteers where they've got experience with neurodiversity, so we can put them with a family where there is that. And we've got a couple of volunteers who've been with us for 26 years.

And a few years ago, one of them came to me and she said, I've had a knee op, I can't get down on the floor anymore. I might be coming to the end of my home visiting.

I still want to be involved in other things in fundraising, but I think I might be coming to the end. Well, she's never without a family because I can find her a family where she doesn't have to get down on the floor.

And she's just brilliant with talking and listening. Listening is a huge part of what our volunteers do.

And giving parents the space to talk, usually mums, someone to just listen to what they're worried about. And so, yeah, we.

We work with our volunteers to match them to the right families and also obviously feeling like they're going to get along with the person who's coming into their home.

Gareth Davies: 00:14:30

What struck me, talking to all three of them, is that none of this only flows one way.

Hannah: 00:14:36

I was able to have that weekly reset where I wasn't completely swallowed up by the overwhelm of things that I couldn't do. So now I feel like I am on track as best as I can be.

And just having, yeah, that extra bit of support, or almost just validating that it's all right to feel really emotional because you're running on hardly any sleep or. Yeah, just feel like you've been listened to.

Issy: 00:15:07

I don't think I realised the impact it would have on me for the love that I quickly developed for my different families and also for understanding the needs of so many people in our community. I think, ashamed to say, I probably walked around a little bit thinking, you know, life's rosy, it's easy, everybody's got homes to live in.

And actually seeing some of the needs and the struggles of some of the families and the support that they need opened my eyes a little bit. So it's probably made me a little bit less judgmental on people's situations.

So as well as giving to the families, I've actually gained a huge amount for myself personally as well.

Gareth Davies: 00:15:47

Which brings us to September. And the practical question underneath all of this, if any of this speaks to you, what does actually becoming a volunteer involve?

Issy certainly wasn't sure what to expect.

Issy: 00:15:58

Oh, there were definitely still doubts and hesitations.

Gareth Davies: 00:16:03

What were those?

Issy: 00:16:05

Did I know enough? What could I do to help these families?

And I guess also some of the situations, it's not always easy to meet new people and I knew I'd be going into their homes and, you know, that's walking into someone else's environment. What does that look like for them as well, and getting to know people in that position.

The Home-Start team are absolutely lovely in the office and they just go through everything. So I think any of my thoughts of what actually will I do? How will I benefit them?

They go through some of the practical steps, some of the activities you'll do with the families, and then they go through some of the harder bits. So obviously they need to talk about child protection and some of the safeguarding procedures.

So they really go through everything that you need to go through to be equipped and actually help expel any of those fears and doubts. And I would say everybody on the course had a range of doubts. Some were similar, some were quite different.

So there's a real breadth of kind of information that they give to you to help you feel equipped to step out into someone's house.

Debra Dennehy: 00:17:12

We generally run two volunteer preparation courses throughout the year, one in the spring and one in the autumn. Our next course is due to start mid September. And the course is eight weeks.

We always break for half term and it fits in with anyone who's got school children because we start at 9:30 and we're usually done by 2:30. It'll be every Tuesday, so it's not solid weeks. And we cover topics like the types of families you might come across.

We look at domestic abuse, we cover safeguarding, which is a really big part of what we do. We look at mental health. We think about listening and judgment and how, because we're very.

It's very important that we're non judgmental but we also understand that people might have their own thoughts that they come with. So a discussion and an exploration. And we try to make the course as fun, as interactive as possible.

It's very informal, so if anyone thinks, oh God, I didn't like school, I don't want to go back to school, it's nothing like that. We do lots of interactive stuff and it's a lot of it's discussion really and a big part of it is us getting to know the volunteers.

So it's run by myself and my colleague Bernie, who's another family support coordinator. And it's our job to match the families with the volunteers. So it helps us to get to know you.

We also find that it's really nice because the volunteers get to know each other and often then form a WhatsApp group and then share their experiences together in a confidential way. We cover confidentiality as well.

So the process, if anyone is interested, the requirement is you can spare two to three hours per week to support a family in Spouthome and that you have parenting experience and that you understand that. We will do a DBS check and we require two references. Our volunteers are so varied in their backgrounds.

We do have some people who are ex teachers, nurses, have worked with social services, but we also have people who are parents who have just experienced parenting and they can support a family just as well as anyone else.

So I would hope that no one would be kind of put off and think they don't have the experience because if you have parented a child then you have the experience.

Issy: 00:19:52

There's no pressure from the Home-Start team at all. If you get to the end of the course and you still really think, I don't think I can do this, they're not going to force you to do it.

You're not signing up on the dotted line from day one. It really is much easier than it feels. It's just about time, just having time.

A listening ear and a smile for these mums and families that need you is all you need to do. So I would definitely say, yeah, 100%. If you are even exploring it, go and do it.

You'll quickly realise, actually how easy it is to do and how much benefit you give to so many people in.

Hannah: 00:20:29

Every walk of life. Accept every bit of help that you can because you can always whittle it down. I didn't realise what help I needed until it was there.

Like, I didn't realise that I needed someone to just almost physically be another person, another responsible adult, to just have like that five minute break where you're like, yeah, yeah, I just need to get my head sorted rather than hear Mama,.

Gareth Davies: 00:20:59

That was Hannah, a mum supported by Home-Start Spelthorne, Issy, one of their volunteers, and Debra Dennehy from the Home-Start Spelthorne team.

30 Years of families in this area being a little less alone because of people willing to show up. If any of this sounds like you, whether that's needing support or having a few hours a week to give, just head to their website to find out more.

And Home-Start Spelthorne's next volunteer course starts in mid September. Thanks once again to our business club partners and members for supporting the production of this episode.

And if you're part of a local business who would like to do the same, plus get your message in front of an engaged local audience, head to the business club page on the website. I'm Gareth, this has been the Sheppertonian, and until next time, I'll see you around.