This month Home-Start Malta is marking its first anniversary of offering support by a group of professionally trained volunteers to parents facing difficult situations. Home-Start helps parents of children aged five years or less, by offering practical and emotional support while bringing up the children.

Nine volunteers, all of them parents, are engaged with Home-Start Malta to give out this service to other parents having at least one child under five years of age, by offering support through friendship. Currently, seven families and 18 children from the Cottonera area are benefiting from Home-Start Malta. Although this project was introduced in the Cottonera area, following its success, it has now also expanded to Zabbar, Zejtun and Fgura.

Agenzija Appogg and Home-Start International collaborated to introduce the project in Malta, supported by the Vodafone Malta Foundation and HSBC Cares For Children Fund. Home-Start is an international service which originated in the United Kingdom in 1973. It now operates in more than 15 countries across Europe, Africa, North America and Asia. In 2004, the organisation helped 74,024 children through 330 schemes in the UK alone.

Home-Start believes that parents are the key in creating a secure and happy environment for their children especially in their formative years. This is why it aims at supporting parents who, for some reason or other, feel overwhelmed by their situations, especially if they don’t have any support. Having other difficulties, such as illness, multiple birth, lack of support network, disability, isolation or lack of child care skills aggravate the situation and the family might easily find itself in a crisis. This is when Home-Start offers its support.

What makes Home-Start a special service is that it is offered on a voluntary basis from parents to parents, who understand the hardships and joys of bringing up young children. Hence, the family feels more supported and understood, which in turn makes for happier parents and children.

Volunteers come from all walks of life – from young parents to “empty-nesters” and grandparents. All volunteers attend professional preparatory sessions so as to be able to help the families in the most efficient way possible. Moreover these volunteers are supported and supervised regularly by the coordinator of the project.

Agenzija Appogg is encouraging people to be part of Home-Start Malta by being volunteers and also encourages families who feel they can benefit from this service to approach the agency.

Those interested in offering their voluntary service or to receive the service may call on 2167-8043 or on 9901-8398, send an e-mail to [email protected] or visit the website www.appogg.gov.mt.

Applications for voluntary work must reach the Home-Start office by not later than Friday 30 March.