Parenting – Parents Helping Other Parents…
Parenting young children is an incredibly rewarding experience. However, as we all know, parenting is not always easy! In this article, Linda our charity’s CEO discusses why we provide essential parenting support services across Central Bedfordshire.
It’s still incredible to think that I’ve been working here for the past 17 years! I have stayed for all this time because I think that Home-Start is a wonderful non-profit organisation that has a real lasting effect on people’s lives.
‘Parents helping other parents’ has been something that has traditionally been done as a part of the community, but now we are becoming increasingly isolated from our wider families who may live in another area and many of us don’t even know our neighbours as we would have in the past. We are becoming an increasingly mobile society with more and more ways to communicate with each other via text, email and social networks, however, there’s no replacement for face-to-face interaction and support. This is especially true when it comes to having parenting support.
Parenting Support That Works
I’ve seen parents that have been helped by Home-Start and have now become Home-Start Volunteers themselves. In life sometimes we need help and sometimes we are able to give help. It’s my opinion that parents helping other parents really works because of the following reasons:
- Having a parent volunteer offer friendship, parenting support and spending the time to listen to your problems is non-threatening.
- There is a sense of understanding and equality in having another parent around offering help as they may have experienced some of the same issues themselves.
- Being able to rely on that same volunteer to visit week after week enables trust to be developed rather than having to see different people with each visit.
- Home-Start Volunteers are there to stand alongside the parents they support in a confidential and non-judgemental way.
- Sometimes this is all we need, someone we can trust to listen to our problems.
This is the formula that has allowed our local charity to help thousands of families over more than 30 years. Follow the link below to find out more about our charitable work in the community.
