Home-Start in Scotland

Our local Home-Starts across Scotland support over 3000 families and nearly 6000 children very year.

Our local community network of over 1000 trained volunteers work with families from before birth through to school age offering compassionate, confidential help to parents when they need us most.

Our focus is on enabling parents and carers to be the warm, consistent and nurturing adults they want to be so that their children get the best possible start in life. Starting in the home our approach is as individual as the people we are helping – on most days of the week you will find teams of great parent to parent supporters involved in activities as diverse as offering one to one support around perinatal mental health problems, increasing breastfeeding through local support groups, getting children outdoors through gardening and messy play days, tackling the attainment gap in partnership with schools, bringing lonely or isolated parents together to forge new friendships and getting dads involved in antenatal workshops.

Home-Start in Scotland brings the Getting It Right for Every Child (GIRFEC) approach to life by bringing family support to the parents and carers who need it most because childhood can’t wait.

Home-Start was founded in 1973. The first Home-Start in Scotland started work in Perth in 1984.