Gainsborough: Lottery money has been awarded to Home-Start Gainsborough to help them develop

Home-Start Gainsborough in Market Street was established in 1992 to professionally recruit and train parent volunteers to offer emotional support, practical help and information to families in order to help parents and children to cope with difficult times, prevent situations from worsening and encourage positive, healthy and enjoyable family relationships.

The nature of the Home-Start service enables us to engage with the most vulnerable families and help them to access the range of family services available to them.

Tina Staples, manager at Home-Start Gainsborough, said: “We are absolutely thrilled as this means we can move to more suitable premises, where along with providing regular support for parents in the home by professionally trained and managed volunteers, we will be able to develop a drop-in service to provide a safe and welcoming place for parents and carers of children, up to the age of 11, to gain emotional and practical support, information and advice.”

“We will be relocating to a premises next to our existing office where we will have our own on-site training room, family room, meeting rooms for our volunteers as well as a community computer access point for people applying for housing, benefits and schooling.”

“The funding will enable us to provide additional training for volunteers, to support parents facing financial hardship and mental health issues, as well as parent workshops for support with managing children’s behaviour and information about healthy lifestyles for themselves and their children.”

“It is our vision to build upon our 22 years’ experience working with families in Gainsborough with complex needs to become a centre of excellence for engaging with and supporting families.”

The Big Lottery Fund is responsible for giving out 40 per cent of the money raised for good causes by the National Lottery.