Category: News

Home link family support would like to invite you to ½ day conference, 7 March 2019

Please come and join us to hear about and develop a city-wide approach to trauma informed practice in Edinburgh.

We welcome a keynote address from Maree Todd, Minister for Children and Young People.

More info here

Make volunteering to help a local family your New Year’s Resolution.

Some families with small children in Edinburgh and Midlothian don’t have anyone to confide in. They need someone like you to visit them for 2hrs a week to listen to their worries, read and play with their kids and help the family to be more resilient.

You don’t need experience, we’ll train you. It’s incredibly satisfying to see a family developing in confidence and it’s great experience for your career.

A parent says: “It’s just nice to have somebody that you know is on your side. It was really good support at a difficult time that helped us as a family get a wee bit stronger when we needed it.’

A volunteer says: “You are building the family up from the first time you meet them, seeing them grow, so they can stand on their own two feet when you go”.

Would you like to join us?

We will be training new volunteers on Saturdays in Feb 2019.

Get in touch for a chat 0131 661 0890

We really need more volunteers for 2019

We are proud to have received our third QiB award, saying that we have ‘achieved the required standard for Excellent Practice in Befriending’ and is awarded by Befriending Networks Scotland.

The process requires us to thoroughly examine our practice to ensure that we have everything in place to offer volunteers and families a really well thought through and tailored service.  It takes a lot of work to comply with the QiB requirements but it is really worthwhile as it gives us time to examine everything we do and ensures that we keep our practice up to date.

The Quality in Befriending (QiB) Award is the only award in the UK, which is specifically tailored for befriending services. The QiB Award is valued by referrers, befrienders, commissioners and funders.

 “Achieving QiB demonstrates that a project has the management expertise, processes and resources to deliver a consistently high quality service. Both client and volunteers can expect to be fully prepared and supported throughout their befriending experience. ”             

External Verifier

“Achieving QiB is no mean feat. It means that a project has systematically investigated its own practice in order to compile its application. It means that the project has internal procedures in place and in practice to ensure that its work provides the best experience for everyone involved in the relationships it initiates. And it means that the project has been able to produce evidence of all of this for assessors and verifiers to clearly see that standards of good practice have been met.”           

External Verifier

Sections of the report

After meeting a volunteer and a family the overall comment on the feedback report on Home Link Family Support said:

• The service is clearly well organised and has clear processes and procedures in place across the different parts of the service. 
• Both the family and the volunteer felt very well supported by the project and although had no difficulties to raise did feel they could have raised these should they have needed to.
• The family was clear that the service had been valuable and had provided her support “The service is really reliable which I need and I look forward to XX coming.  I would just like to say THANK YOU to Home Link it has been so helpful, it’s shame my year is almost over.” She also stated “I would recommend the service to other mums,  it makes the day go brighter.”

QiB verifiers selected a couple of areas of particularly good practice:

Specific examples of noteworthy resources and materials included in the application are listed below with comments.

• It was nice to hear from the family that although it took a while to meet her family volunteer it didn’t feel like she was on a waiting list and the Coordinator kept in regular contact and supported her during the time “it didn’t really feel like waiting”
• Good examples viewed of both qualitative and quantitative data on internal evaluations and the use of an external evaluator.
• Out of hours well thought out and clear procedures
• Good clear strategic plan with clear aims and responsibility and timelines and indicators

What a wonderful surprise. Cody, aged 10, delivered sackfuls of children’s Christmas gifts to our office.

His amazing fundraising effort called Cody’s Xmas Toybox, enables us to provide  for over 50 vulnerable children across Edinburgh, we can’t thank him enough.

This Christmas 60% of the families we support are struggling to make ends meet, Cody’s generosity means their children will have presents to open this year”

We help families with small children, but we also get help from these two local organisations who help us give a little extra bespoke sparkle to small children who usually get very little.

Kids Love Clothes collect the anonymised details of a child from us. A few days later they deliver literally bags of stuff to our office; beautifully laundered and pressed, and especially picked out for to suit that child.  They included shoes, these wonderful pink wellies pictured and even party clothes. Our Coordinators then take them to families who perhaps are newly arrived from places like Syria, or are living in Emergency accommodation, or simply don’t have warm winter clothes for their kids so they can’t play outside.

One mum said “It was like the clothes were tailored for them, everything fitted. It is so much easier knowing the children have lots of clothes to change into and I don’t have to keep washing the few outfits they have. I don’t need to use the washing machine every day so it saves electricity and saves me money. They don’t have to wear the same having the same stuff every day and they are not going out with clothes that are shredded at the knees or elbows.”

Another service that we love to use is Free Cakes For Kids, a brilliant organisation with an army of volunteer bakers who make personalised birthday cakes to order for children who would otherwise go without.

Their creations are magnificent, worthy of Great British Bake Off, like this stupendous Power Puff Girls cake that we delivered this week. It is like a work of art!

If you want to bake or have clothes or time to give to these wonderful organisations, please get in touch with them

freecakesforkidsedinburgh@gmail.com   https://www.facebook.com/KidsLoveClothes/

We went to the Scottish parliament yesterday to talk about the importance of Befriending.

Maria, a volunteer, and Remi, a parent spoke to MSPs at the Befriending Impact event organised by Befriending Networks. They powerfully described the loneliness of early parenthood and how home visits from volunteers can raise parent’s confidence.

We also heard fascinating stories from other volunteer organisations including Food Train, COVEY, Epilepsy Connexion and Edinburgh Headway.

Helen Gault is the Antenatal Coordinator supporting families before and after their babies are born,in Edinburgh.

This week I took a Mum and her 12 week old baby to a PEEP group.

Jill has been suffering from anxiety and has not been feeling able to go out much since her baby,Lily’s birth.

“I have forgotten how to have a conversation with people” she said, “people are talking about doing this and that, and I just sit there.”

It has taken us a few weeks to work up to getting to the group, but this week Jill decided that she was going to push herself despite still feeling very anxious. We got to the group first and settled Lily on one of the play mats, she loved looking around at all the new colours and shapes and lay chatting away.

There were only a couple of other Mums there with their babies and Jill found that she was able to join in with the conversations, which were mainly about nappies and sleep! The babies created a distraction whenever there was a lull in conversation.

Lily got a bit bored lying down so Jill sat her up on her knee. Lily suddenly noticed Mia sitting across from her and was fascinated. Jill said that this was the first time that Lily had seen another baby. Mia was smiling and Lily smiled and babbled back.

At the end of the group, Jill said that she had loved seeing how much Lily had got out of it and that she had actually really enjoyed it. She was glad she had pushed herself to go and said that she would come again next week.

Going along to the group helped Jill feel better and gain a little confidence, Lily experienced new surroundings and interaction with peers and other adults. Hopefully Jill will continue to attend and feel less isolated and less overwhelmed and anxious.

Have you ever met a Bookbug?  They are delightfully fluffy yellow creatures that love to help little children to use books.  Our volunteers often take a Bookbug with them when they visit the families they are supporting

Recently a family in Midlothian was referred to Home Link Family Support as mum was feeling quite isolated.  Dad often away with work and mum felt stuck at home with her 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son.  The family were new to the area and mum felt unable to get out with the kids, tired and the thought of playing and reading with them overwhelmed her at times.

A Home Link Family Support coordinator met the family and spent some time getting to know them, and then matched them with a weekly volunteer.  The volunteer had recently attended Book Bug At Home training which was part of Home Link’s Volunteer training opportunities.  This meant the volunteer felt confident about singing and reading with children, and was able to take along her Bookbug and a wonderful bag of books and resources.  The kids loved her weekly visits and looked forward to having cuddles with Bookbug while exploring the books together.

The volunteer visited every Tuesday, for a year and her visits included many other activities such as trips to the park, the library and the museum. Gradually mum was able to see how well the kids responded to books and Book Bug and she started to get involved. When dad came home from work, he was happy to join in too.  When the match ended both Mum and Dad said what a huge difference this had made – books, rhymes and singing had become a regular fun part of family life and that the children would often ask for books and songs before bed.

Rachel Almeida

Midlothian Young Parents Support Coordinator

Meet our current trainee volunteers attending a course in Dalkeith.

You could join us for our next training course in Nov 2018.

Apply here