3 Rossmore Road, London NW1 6NJ
THE MANAGER AND CO-ORDINATOR REPORTS
FOR HOME-START WESTMINSTER
BOARD OF TRUSTEES MEETING TO BE HELD
23/01/13 Christa Scholtz
Happy New Year to everyone. We go into this year in such good shape,
but as in the past we know there is no room for complacency. All the
different aspects of our work will remain challenging, because of the
climate as well as on the positive side a real recognition of our work.
Service Delivery: Families
No. of families:
Oct 12 Nov 12
Currently being supported
(as of the 1st of the month)
Matched
Closed
New referrals
Waiting for a volunteer
HS-UK annual
target
Actual to date
157
Closed to date
105
Dec 12
77
76
86
12
18
4
13
8
14
23
20
5
31
26
27
181
(up to the end of the
month)
Families:
Although we have not officially closed our books we are telling
referrers and saying at meetings that we will not see any new families
until March except for Bump-Start referrals and therapy clients. This
will give us a chance to look at some of the issues that have come up
in the Q&A and we will look again with Gillie as to how we manage
families and monitoring and evaluation.
Home-Start Westminster – registered charity 1091756
Tel: 020 7724 1345 Fax: 020 7724 1349
Email: admin@hswestminster.co.uk
3 Rossmore Road, London NW1 6NJ
Christmas Party for families:
The Christmas party that was organised by Brown-Forman (who was
linked to us via ‘Time and Talents’) was a resounding success. There
was a huge turn out and I think all would agree that a very special
atmosphere was created. One child said his first word ‘bubbles’ at the
event and another mum said that she had never seen her autistic son
interact so well! Emily has fed back to the organisation and sent them
photos and scheduled in a follow up meeting in February. We hope
that this is the start of a continuing relationship!
Volunteers:
Quote from a volunteer:
“ As a volunteer was leaving the office last week after supervision– she turned
back up the stairs and just said to me that when she came to the office she always
just felt at peace within herself and that she wanted to feed that back to us.”
Prep course:
As always we panic about getting enough volunteers, but as of now we
have 10 confirmed and several interviews waiting so we are sure it will
be OK on the day and possibly as always have to turn people away. As
always just amazing people are coming forward.
Depression Training for Volunteers:
Emily organised a very successful accredited training on Depression.
We have been trying to put this on for years and I want to thank Emily
for doing it as she had very little time in her schedule to do this. I
really thought it was worth doing as I think we can improve it a lot
especially with Penny’s input. More and more we seem to be so far
ahead of Home-Start UK, but we are also aware that they cater for
schemes across the country.
Guest Speaker: Lesley Murdin, a well renowned psychotherapist and a
contact of Penny’s, came in and delivered a morning session during
the module which really added a huge amount to the course. Lesley
has written several books on topics such as Endings in Psychotherapy,
transference and Ethics in counselling and psychotherapy. This added
a different dimension to the course which was invaluable. Thank you
to Penny for arranging this.
Service in general:
Although few families were matched in Dec, it was a very active month
with the volunteer party and end of year party. Lack of volunteers and
a huge influx of referrals have made the matching of families difficult.
Our waiting list, which came down over the year is again at capacity.
Home-Start Westminster – registered charity 1091756
Tel: 020 7724 1345 Fax: 020 7724 1349
Email: admin@hswestminster.co.uk
3 Rossmore Road, London NW1 6NJ
Quarterly Review with new Tri-borough contracts manager:
I will have this on the 22nd so will feed back verbally.
Programs:
Dynamic Kids:
This project is more and more part of our work. We are getting more
positive feedback from volunteers. For example, one volunteer
working with a family in the refuge described in supervision how she
engaged with the children through DK: “I don’t think the little girl
would have joined in otherwise, it was the music”. She also described a
“special bonding moment” after the family had great fun singing and
dancing and were feeling relaxed, when the mother cuddled up with
her children on the floor pretending to be asleep during the winddown song. The training session which Miriam co-facilitated with
Christina had fantastic feedback, the volunteers enjoyed the fun and
active style.
BUMP-START
Bump-Start is going very well. We’ve now had our first 4 Bump-Start
babies born who are all well and healthy. We have had 11 referrals in
total, exceeding our target of 2 a month. 7 of these referrals are now
receiving volunteer support, 2 are waiting to be matched and 2 have
been closed (1 due to having a termination and 1 refused the service).
It is still early days but so far a high proportion of these 11 families (7
in total) are assessing therapy, some through us and some through
other routes, which shows the high amount of depression we are
encountering. Also interestingly 7 of the 11 families referred are new
time parents and 4 already have existing children.
Georgina is now working on devising a Bump-Start pre and post birth
assessment measure which she am then taking to a local HV for his
input and advice. We are making the final adjustments to our leaflet
for parent’s and then will have it professionally printed before starting
on a leaflet for professionals. Christina has kindly managed to gain a
donation of £1000 for this.
Source of referrals:
Sept
Health visitor
Midwife
Children Centre
Social Services
DV refuge
2
Oct
1
2
1
Nov
1
1
2
Dec
Total
1
3
4
2
Home-Start Westminster – registered charity 1091756
Tel: 020 7724 1345 Fax: 020 7724 1349
Email: admin@hswestminster.co.uk
3 Rossmore Road, London NW1 6NJ
Voluntary Org
Self
Other
1 (hospital
psychiatry
team)
1
ART Therapy:
As with our social work students we always learn something new. This
group of students are not as dynamic as the last 3 we had and that
affects how people respond especially in the groups. New Pin has not
really supported the group in any way and therefore we have had to
close that group. The group in the Children’s Centre in Bravington is
struggling, but Emily and I am keeping an eye on it as we feel that is
has to do with the students as well. One on one they are doing very
good work and the groups in the Refuges seem to be going really well.
VIMS: The VIMS project has been piloting new training modules for
staff. Emily has cascaded these down and will feedback to HSUK all
staff feedback which was very useful. The general feel was that our
training is at a higher level to many other schemes and we have had a
lot of input to give. We also have been granted £750 to spend by
March 2013 which is as part of the project. Emily is going to work with
Peter to think about ideas on how to spend this; potentially on a
‘celebration and recruitment’ volunteer event.
Housing resettlement project:
We were awarded the Big Lottery funding for this project, which is in
partnership with CAB, Z2K and Advocacy Plus. This project will give us
experience of working in a partnership, and the funding is for work
that we are already having to do for some families so it will be good to
have some help with this. I have got feedback from Catherine
regarding the legal aspects of the partnership, and Miriam and I are
attending a meeting on 17th January with the partners. I will give verbal
feedback after the meeting.
NW Consortia: This is making slow progress but is still in planning
stage. There are concerns from both Christa and Emily regarding the
partners and the general atmosphere. We can feedback verbally.
Working with the Children’s Centres:
Miriam is now in Churchill Garden’s Children’s Centre in the South on
Tuesdays. This relationship is already working well and making us
more part of things – Miriam and George are planning to do a Made of
Home-Start Westminster – registered charity 1091756
Tel: 020 7724 1345 Fax: 020 7724 1349
Email: admin@hswestminster.co.uk
3 Rossmore Road, London NW1 6NJ
Money group there in April and the Centre will fund the crèche and
provide a room. The Manager has also approached Miriam about
including Home-Start in the package of support they are putting
together for families with young children on the estate who have been
raided by police, as this is increasing. The Portman Centre have now
asked when they will have a staff member there.
Staff:
We have all come back after a much needed break and everyone is
back in full swing. Everyone is very excited about getting funding for
supervision training and I had a meeting with the Tavistock to look at
how to design the training around our work. As our work becomes
more complex this training is now essential. This will also help with
our continuing assessment of families, something that is finally
beginning to get a bit more attention in the wider family support
environment.
Training:
We were awarded a Bursary by the Department of Health Volunteering
Fund towards staff training, as well as the cost of running a panel
debate on attachment for statutory professionals.
I am going to do some Advanced Supervision Training and a much
needed refresher. The staff had a training day on personal
effectiveness and leadership with Pauline Rennie-Peyton and Gillie in
December, and will have a unique tailored training programme from
the Tavistock on Supervision.
We had a meeting with Jayne Vertkin on 17th January to discuss the
event which will be in early March. I will report verbally on this at the
BOT. Jayne mention two things that I thought were significant. One
was that Andy Jones is still looking at Home-Starts role in Child
Protection cases and she said that assessments were high on the list of
Westminster’s agenda and that they were in particular looking at the
family star. She was very pleased that we were informed and interested
in this.
Meetings and Events:
Prevention of Harm Meeting: I am beginning to find my feet in these
meetings and a role. An outcome from this meeting was that I had a
meeting with a Westminster researcher looking at how we can work
better across the borough with various volunteer initiatives including
their Family Champions. It became very clear to her during our
meeting that our volunteers work at a much deeper level with families
than most other volunteer places and that we invest a lot more into
Home-Start Westminster – registered charity 1091756
Tel: 020 7724 1345 Fax: 020 7724 1349
Email: admin@hswestminster.co.uk
3 Rossmore Road, London NW1 6NJ
volunteer support and training. She will feed back to me at some
point.
Meeting with Andy Jones, Acting Child Protection Manager: There is
no progress on this, but perhaps we could make Westminster an offer.
Andy Jones is attending the LAM at the moment so it has not
disappeared off the agenda and Jayne Vertkin mentioned it in her
meeting with us yesterday
30/11/12 Communication and language from the very beginning
An excellent event with people like Judith Barlow, midwives and health
visitors talking about different programs they do with mothers and
babies.
Home-Start Westminster – registered charity 1091756
Tel: 020 7724 1345 Fax: 020 7724 1349
Email: admin@hswestminster.co.uk