Parenting young children is a joy, but it also brings its challenges. Home-Start Banbury, Bicester & Chipping Norton support families with at least one child under the age of 5 years, who are finding family life overwhelming due to other difficulties in their lives such as isolation, poor mental health, financial hardship, disability, domestic abuse amongst other adverse life experiences.

Our services include:

• 1:1 home-visiting support delivered by a Home-Start volunteer or our Family Support Worker. Emotional support and practical help is provided weekly in the family home and may include listening to worries, signposting to other services, accompanying to appointments, modelling positive play and interaction with the children, encouraging the family to access other local community groups. Support continues for as long as a family needs it. We support approximately 80 families every year with this support, improving family life for over 150 children.

• Stay & Play sessions: 3 are held weekly in Banbury and Bicester during term-time. These are open to any family/carer with a child under the age of 5 years. A staff member co-ordinates the session, ably supported by 1 or more volunteers. These sessions provide a warm, nurturing environment for families with enriching learning activities for the children. These sessions are free to access.

• It is important to us that our volunteers enjoy volunteering with us. We provide ongoing supervision to volunteers to ensure they feel comfortably supported in their role, and monthly training or social events.

• We host monthly gardening sessions at a local community garden in Banbury for our supported families

• Annually, we provide families with a Summer Outing and a Christmas Party.