ANNUAL REPORT 2018-19 Creating Childhoods. Changing Futures. Empowering Families. Our vision Every parent has the support they need to give their children the best start in life.

Our values We lead with integrity to deliver a professional and reliable service. We foster a sense of community by being responsive, friendly and kind. We work to support, enable and inspire. Everyone feels valued, respected, listened to and included.

A better start in life can CHANGE a child's future. About our charity

HOME-START & THREE RIVERS helps families with at least one child under 5 years deal with the challenges they face. These include post-natal depression, social isolation, poor mental health, illness, disability, bereavement and other issues. We reach families across Watford, Three Rivers and Hertsmere Districts - three of the five local authorities in South West .

We intervene early to support parents as they learn to cope, improve their confidence and build better lives for their children.

We tailor our support to each family and their specific needs. Working with the whole family, we offer emotional and practical support for parents, play and development opportunities for children and improved networks and access to local services for all.

We are a fully independent local charity, embedded in our community. Our staff and volunteers know and represent our local area, and much of our funding comes from local sources. We are supported by the national organisation, Home-Start UK, which offers advice, training, information and guidance to the Home-Start network to ensure consistent and quality support for parents and children.

Making a difference for children and families in South West Hertfordshire. At a glance

Home-start Watford & Three Rivers offers a range of home and community based services for families. These include home-visiting, family groups and counselling.

Everything we do is designed to have a tangible, positive impact including:

Emotional support to help parents find ways to manage and resolve problems.

Direct support to children, including playing, listening, having fun, establishing feeding routines, encouraging development and providing opportunities for outings and treats.

Practical help including budgeting, nutrition and meal planning, cooking and making the home safe.

Outreach and family group work so parents can get out, meet others and become more involved in their own community.

Information and links to other organisations including health and educational services.

Attendance at meetings and moral support, especially in relation to dealing with case conferences, solicitors and court cases.

Access to parenting advice and parenting skills training.

We aim to:

Change how parents think and feel about themselves Help them cope with the challenges they are facing Support them to reach their potential and be the best parents that they can be

Our service is universal, to ALL families, WHATEVER their background or need. We particularly focus on socially isolated families not engaging with other services. Our achievements in numbers

23 family visits each week 96 families Family Groups Home 17 222 Visiting new children volunteers

979 120 visits

Volunteers

10,644 Counselling 119 hours sessions

Because tomorrow starts today Making a real difference to our families

We use Home-Start UK's monitoring tool to capture the core goal or 'essence' of our services. Every family’s needs were measured at the start, middle and end of support, and they scored themselves from 0 (not coping at all) to 5 (coping very well).

With support from Home-Start Watford & Three Rivers, families made progress in all four areas of need: 71% Parenting skills, parental well-being, child well-being and family management. of famiies were The chart below shows the impact that support from Home-Start Watford & Three Rivers has had on these families. Start score Middle score End score

Score

Parenting Parent's Children's Family Skills Well-being Well-being Management

Watford

Hertsmere

Three Rivers

0 20 40 60 South West Hertfordshire map % % % % Our area of coverage Families supported by District Chairperson's Report SUE BRADSHAW

This year has been my first full year as Chairperson. I am proud to be part of such a vibrant and important charity. We also celebrated 25 years of supporting local families!

Our focus has, of course, been on our primary purpose of supporting our families with children under 5 years of age. We helped 96 families with home-visiting, over 100 families in our family groups and 11 more through our Time2Talk counselling service. In order to do this, we have an excellent team of volunteers and staff who always go the extra mile to support others.

To provide this support for local families we have recruited and trained another cohort of volunteers, all bringing their parenting expertise, enthusiasm and non-judgmental support to the families they work with. We know our Home-Start Service makes a difference. You can see in this document how parents report improvement in their Coping Scores across a range of needs.

We do not receive statutory funding so for every family we support we have to fund this locally. Thanks to the National Lottery Community Fund, we are funded to support 42 families per year. Other funding comes from a variety of sources such as Three Rivers District Council and Hertsmere Borough Council, individual councillors, community fundraising and corporate sponsors. Fundraising can be fun too and we had another successful Snowflake Ball at Moor Park Mansion, sponsored by Warner Bros. Studios.

Our two shops (opened in late 2017) have become established and boosted by donations from Mothercare as well as many local supporters. In the next financial year, we are expecting to see the financial benefits of this investment.

Despite such great support we still ended the year with a funding deficit and so our fundraising efforts continue. Our ambition is to have a healthy charity with regular and sustainable income for the next 25 years.

I am taking this opportunity to thank Keith Fletcher who retired as trustee and treasurer at the end of the 18-19 financial year. Keith has been an active and dedicated friend of our charity for many years and his presence in the office and at board meetings will be missed. We all hope Keith will keep in touch and join us at future events

Thank you also to every one of you who supports Home-Start Watford & Three Rivers, whether as volunteer, employee, fundraiser or advocate, you are all part of this wonderful charity helping the next generation of families be the very best they can. CEO's Report EMMA POWER

After the whirlwind of 2017/18, as a team, we agreed this year would be about ‘consolidation’ and consolidate we did. It was so important for us to re- centre and focus on the core values and ethos of our amazing organisation.

Volunteers are the foundation of Home-Start. After seven years of managing the charity I am still in awe of how generous volunteers are with their time and their commitment to improving the lives of local families. Whether this be through working in our shops, visiting families at home, offering counselling sessions, helping at the Family Groups, providing admin support in our office or governing the charity, every second of time given makes a difference. A real tangible achievement this year was the creation of our confidential office space for volunteers and families alike funded by County Councillors, Watford Borough Council and the Watford Bid.

We are starting 2019 in a good place despite the ongoing challenges of securing sustainable funding so that can continue our core work as well as enabling us to plan for future projects. We have become a highly respected charity and the support we have locally from businesses such as Intu, TJX, Hilton and Warner Bros. are integral to our ongoing survival. This generous support whether it be funding or volunteering enables us to go the ‘extra mile’ for families—providing Easter parties, park fun days and day trips in the summer months. These occasions will always be the highlights of my year. Why?

Because making memories matters and:

Childhood Can’t Wait! HomeHome-visiting Visiting

We supported 96 families through home-visiting, all of whom needed tailored additional support. This enabled us to reach and improve everyday life for 222 children.

This unique service is at the core of our work. Our experienced Coordinators recruit and train a network of volunteers, all with parenting experience. These trained parent volunteers are sensitively matched with a family that needs support, and they visit them for 2-3 hours each week, over a six-month period. They build an in-depth relationship, offering a listening ear, and practical and emotional support to parents. We are the only national organisation to go into homes in crisis to take the strain off families

Support is provided in a variety of ways including assisting parents/guardians to:

learn how to play constructively with their children; understand how to prepare their children for nursery and school; learn how to cook healthy meals within a limited budget; access statutory services and financial benefits; attend appointments with professional bodies; cope with special challenges associated with multiple births and disabled children.

Our volunteers provide emotional and practical stability to children in times when their parents/guardians were under pressure e.g. following the arrival of new born babies, illness and marriage breakdown.

Volunteers help children to improve language skills and creativity through communication, reading and imaginative play, and to develop appropriate responses to other children and adults.

In addition to carefully matching volunteers and families, staff also directly supported Home-Start Watford & Three Rivers families by attending meetings with professionals and signposting them to specialist help where required. Working with families with multiple and complex needs

An analysis of families supported by Home- Start Watford & Three Rivers during 2018-19 showed them to have a wide range of needs:

71% of families were 18% of families were lonely experiencing 58% & isolated of parents had domestic abuse mental health difficulties 65% of families were experiencing 48% of families had low self esteem poor physical health 57% 42% of families needed help of families needed support with their managing their children's behaviour children's learning & deveopment

lonely & isolatedIn 8% In 8% of families, there were of families, there were concerns about concerns about

children's children's physical health mental health

45% 38% needed help 36% experienced 32% running the needed help 17% conflict and experienced household to use other needed help stress at hadconflict multiple and services with home stresschildren in the budgeting underhome 5 Reducing Social Isolation EMMA BRYAN

We are midway through the second year of our National Lottery Community Fund project on Social Isolation - a modern phenomenon experienced by many families. It can lead to the lowered development of children’s social and communication skills and have far reaching consequences. In Year 1 (ended Oct 18):

We had achieved our target and supported 42 families. Data showed 100% progress in family scores around social isolation. Average initial assessment scores rose from 1.5 to 4 at project end. Data highlighted these families to be some of our most socio-economically vulnerable, with 74% also requiring additional support with food etc. We exceeded our target to recruit an additional 15 home-visiting volunteers. We made Solution Focused Training integral to our new Volunteer’s Preparation Course and rolled out additional training for our existing volunteers. We now have 88% of all home-visitors fully trained in this approach.

We are on track to support another 42 families in Y2 and have recruited 7 volunteers. Data on children’s progress is longitudinal and will be available for comparison in Y3.

Analysis of Y1 enabled us to identify areas for improvement which have been carefully adjusted to ensure the project runs effectively. We are now also working closely with an external moderator from the NHS sector bringing another perspective and ensuring we remain challenged.

There is a growing awareness of social isolation and 18 months into our project, we are meeting with other professionals to share our knowledge and experience in this area.

Coping scores “It's been such an important part of my week. I have so looked forward Initial End Initial Initial End End to my volunteers support giving me a chance to go to places I couldn't usually. “ HS Family

Copingisolation with Involvement in Attendancee.g. groupsat

and socialisation children's services children's development CounsellingHome-visiting RACHEL ALLEN

The Home-Start Counselling Service offers support to parents who are living with a common mental health problem, such as depression, anxiety, a long-term health condition or disability.

We also support parents experiencing difficult life events including divorce, bereavement or issues from their own childhood. By showing empathy, and walking alongside these parents, we aim to improve their resilience and confidence in their parenting abilities, and to improve the life chances of their children.

When we have made contact with a family and visited them for an initial assessment, our Co-ordinators consider whether the parent might benefit from referral to our counselling service. Parents can also be referred by their home-visiting volunteer, or can self-refer at any time during their support.

This year, 11 parents have become clients of our counselling service with access to a professionally qualified Counsellor, once a week, to talk though issues causing them difficulty. We have enabled clients to attend sessions by removing the barriers faced by parents who would like to access counselling. This has included providing childcare by our trained and experienced home-visiting volunteers who are also able to provide transport to the session should this be an issue. This is reflected in our attendance figures and we are delighted that the average attendance rate at sessions was 64%.

Engagement in sessions also increases the opportunity to improve emotional well- being. Our Counsellors use a measurement tool called CORE-10 to monitor the client's well-being and the scores illustrate the client’s psychological well-being. On average, most clients accessing the Counselling Service scored over 25 indicating that they were experiencing severe psychological distress. Once their sessions had ended, 100% of clients scored 25 or under, with their scores decreasing, on average, by 10 points. In fact, we are pleased that 3 clients scored themselves under 10 suggesting they had a healthy sense of psychological well-being at the end of their counselling sessions.

The graph overleaf illustrates individual progress (4 clients remain in counselling sessions therefore end scores are not available). Following a detailed in-house evaluation of the counselling service in 2017/18, a number of changes were implemented this year. Our data illustrated that our counselling interventions were most powerful when they were carried out for a fixed term, and run in conjunction with our home-visiting service. This was due to the additional emotional support provided by a home-visiting volunteer, along with practical support that enabled users to attend the sessions, We have therefore limited the total number of sessions to 26 (with a short extension offered in exceptional circumstances). This is helping us to maximise the impact of the service, keep the waiting list low and offer the service to more clients throughout the year.

In addition, we now have a written Client Agreement which outlines what to expect from counselling sessions, both by the client and the Counsellor. This includes agreeing an affordable, individual fee to be paid by the client for the counselling sessions and has enabled us to provide self-generated income totalling £402. Thank you to our clients who provided service user contributions.

2019/20 is set to be an exciting year for the Counselling Service! For 3 years we have been grateful for the support and expertise offered by Signpost who have partnered with us to provide our Counselling Service. Our thanks extended to their team.

“Thank you for helping me with depression.

Now I am not afraid to live.” HS Parent FamilyHome-visiting Groups WATFORD & SOUTH

The Barn, Watford Otley Way,

This is an open group serving a This group is specifically for Home- diversely rich community in a very Start families. As such, it is transient area. purposefully kept smaller in order that it can properly nurture the families that We have successfully identified a attend. number of vulnerable families in need of support and have been able to refer Case Study them into the home-visiting service. One socially isolated mum started visiting our group in March, after her Numbers attending our groups have husband had left. She has formed been steady throughout the year; an friendships with other parents who average of 16 families weekly at The attend, and they now meet up outside Barn and 7 at Otley Way. the group to support one another.

Both groups are an invaluable resource, Within a couple of months of attending running alongside home-visiting. Many the group this mum’s coping scores, families attend because they trust us for social isolation, increased from a 1 and feel safe within our service. to a 4.

We also run a Stay & Play session at Intu, Watford on the first Wednesday of every month. “The group has become a part of our weekly routine. We show parents that play can be achieved on the tightest of budgets, using general items from around the home. Without it we would be lost!“ HS Family It can be a great boost to parents’ confidence to learn some simple activities that encourage child development through exploring, creating and having fun. Families, parents and children participated in a whole range of activities, events and therapeutic sessions So throughout the year. much more.

Easter Party 20 Stay & Play Groups 247

Our impact is much more than the number of families being referred to our service or the visits made by our Home- Visiting volunteers.

We also support local families through our Stay and Play family groups in Watford and South Summer Trip 21 Counselling service 11 Oxhey, our counselling service and two charity shops.

With the support of Home-Start and their volunteer, families can access days out and stay and play groups.

We work with other community organisations and local Willows Farm 36 Summer Fun Day 38 businesses to enable vulnerable families to attend our Easter party, an annual day trip to Paradise Wildlife Park, and Family Fun Day in Park. Many children come from families who could not otherwise afford to access such activities. Summer food hampers 9 Christmas essentials/ 52 toy hampers Families are supported throughout the year with food hampers, food bank vouchers and hampers at Christmas time provided by Joan of Arc School.

Christmas Parties 37 Santa at his INTU Grotto 54 Reaching into the community

114 referrals were received during the year. The graphs below illustrates where they came from.

40%

30%

20% of10% famiies were 0%

Self GP

Education Social WorkerHealth Visitor Family Centre Perinatal Support

Community NHS Trust Family Support Services

Other Community Organisation

Home-Start connects families with other services in the community.

Our volunteers also accompanied families on 120 essential appointments during the year, many of which families would not otherwise have been able to attend. The graph below illustrates the type of accompanied visits made.

25%

20%

15%

10%

5%

0%

CAB

Health Visitor Local Library Family Centre Mental Health Toddler Group Job Centre Plus Debt Counselling Family GP/Medical Speech & Language Mother & Baby Clinic Parenting Programme Other VoluntaryOther Statutory Service Service Housing/Benefits Support Treasurer's Report KEITH FLETCHER

I have been Treasurer for almost 10 years but this will be my last report as I have stepped down from the Trustee Board. During my time the Scheme has had much success in supporting families even though the financial environment has become increasingly tough during that period. I would like to thank the Home-Start team, the Trustees and our funders for making my job very rewarding. I am very pleased that the Scheme has an excellent new Treasurer, John Robinson, who is already in post.

The last financial year to 31st March has again been one of tightening funding availability across the board. The Scheme’s total income represented a significant uplift on the previous year as both of our new shop locations were fully operational. Our expenditure reflected the higher costs from the Scheme’s broader service offers from the home visiting, groups and counselling activities but were lower than the previous year as the one-off shop investment costs dropped out of the figures. The Scheme has again drawn down on its reserves to fund the shortfall of income over expenditure. The shortfall arose because of the lead time to secure new funding sources and the reduced footfall on the High Street, which meant the shops brought in less income than planned.

We remain well supported in the locality from some councils, many companies, clubs, societies and individual donors, without whom we could not provide the service we do. The Scheme will continue to work tirelessly for the families in our community and towards sustainability of funding to continue to meet the Scheme’s increasing demand for its services.

Financial Summary 2018-19 *

2018-19 2017-18

Income £ 217,920 £ 171,047

Expenditure £ 250,248 £ 251,555

* Extract from our full accounts Special thanks to our amazing volunteers Thank You to Funders and Supporters

Abbots Langley Football Club Hertsmere Borough Council Scroll Church Albert Hunt Trust Hilton Signature Fundraising Alchemy Foundation Intu Watford Souter Trust Asda Watford Jarvis Trust St Marys School Big Lottery Community Fund Keith and Veronica Stevens Starbucks Black Horse Pub Kindness Campaign Participants Starburst Academy Bow Choir KPMG Step for Home-Start Participants Bromet School London Show Choir Tarboush Brownies Lynn Foundation Tesco Rickmansworth Central School Messy Church (Abbots Langley) Three Rivers District Council Cllr Caroline Clapper Moor Park Mansion TJX Cllr Jane West Mothercare Twenty CI Cllr Joan King Myers Clark United Way Cllr Morris Bright Neighbourly Charitable Trust Usborne Charity Cllr Nigel Bell Nina and Roger Stewart Trust Victoria King (VWV) Cllr Ralph Sangster Odd Fellows Pub VWV Solicitors Cllr Stephen Giles-Medhurst Paget Trust Warner Bros. Colhart Art Queens School & Dragons Apprentices Watford Bid DWP Rabi Martin Watford Borough Council Family Holiday Association Ray Schwartz (GAS) Watford Community Housing Trust Four Acre Trust Reuben Foundation Watford FC Kiosk teams Fuell Richard Platt Trust WO Street Hertfordshire Community Rob Kramer Zedra Trust Foundation Robert Kiln Hoss Photography Saffron Green School

1st Floor, The Xchange, Wilmington Close Watford, Hertfordshire WD18 0FQ 01923 248010 [email protected] home-startwatford.org.uk