Party time Three cheers for family support charity
To make it to 21 years is fantastic
AFAMILY support charity is celebrating more than two decades helping people in the South Side. Staff and volunteers at Home Start Glasgow, based in Pollokshaws Burgh Halls, will today mark their 21st year as a group.
Since being formed, Home Start Glasgow South has helped 5,000 families and 11,000 children in the South Side.
Colette Boyle, director of the charity, said: “To make it to 21 years, it’s just fantastic.
“As a charity, it really is a testament to the work of our volunteers, trustees and staff but also to the thousands of families that have put their trust in us to help.
“One of the best things to see is when the kids and families you’ve helped 20 years ago come back and volunteer or become a trustee. Last time you saw them they were a child and now they are adults!
“It really shows how ingrained in the community we have become and how many people have relied on us over the past two decades.”
Home Start Glasgow South is a branch of the national Home Start group and, since launching in 2000, has become the largest regional groups in Scotland.
It offers help for a range of issues such as mental health difficulties, bereavement, family breakdown, addiction and physical ill-health.
Families have been offered services such as home visiting volunteers and tutors, intensive family support, school family support and one-to-one support for dads, among a range of others.
However, the team at Home start Glasgow South and their 70 volunteers were forced to make quick moves to facilitate support during the pandemic.
Saqib Abbasi, assistant director, said: “Over the past year we have been getting increasing numbers of referrals, and we expect these numbers to increase again over the past few years in the aftermath of the pandemic.
“Our approach has been changing over the past five or six years – where we used to only offer peer support, we have started to take a more holistic approach to helping families and children.”
Colette, right, added: “When the pandemic hit, it was a big adjustment for us, but we were lucky enough to be able to make the switch to online and digital support. We were given funding to hand out tablets and wifi to those who were digitally excluded, because we quickly realised that even if we put our support online, people needed to be able to access it.”
Colette and Saqib also say that the group were in a unique position as an organisation, with statutory support groups such as Social Work unable to stay present during lockdown.
Saqib said: “As a midsize charity group, we are still able to keep that one-onone touch to our support, which was a particularly important during lockdown.”
Colette said: “We were able to see people in person when lockdown was lifted a bit but it made a big difference even just being able to speak over Zoom and be able to see the family and the children.”
One of the biggest challenges for the group going forward, however, will be funding.
Saqib said: “We’ve been going for 21 years and in an ideal world, we would be going for another 21 years, if not more, to support the community but that can only happen if we are supported.”
He added: “We have seen around a 20% to 30% decrease in funding already.”