Family support

Families can experience challenging times, with many receiving help from friends and relatives. But there are times when problems can seem overwhelming, and some extra support is needed. Volunteers work alongside families to offer guidance, tailored emotional support and practical assistance to help encourage positive family relationships. This vital input from volunteers can result in increased stability for the whole family and can be crucial in supporting Children’s Services to keep more children safely at home.

About the role

This is a fantastic opportunity to support families in your local community, using your experience and skills to develop relationships and bring about positive change.

Volunteers visit or contact families in their homes or other local settings, to help build trust and rapport. Using family support techniques, which are fully explained during training and complement those used by professionals, volunteers can provide invaluable assistance while focusing on keeping children safely at home, where possible.

Our approach centres around supporting the whole family. Our volunteers enjoy the flexibility to work from Monday to Sunday, 8am to 8pm, ensuring that we provide the right support at the right time.

With the help of our staff and volunteers, families can overcome their difficulties to become stronger, happier, and healthier.

Working alongside professional teams to support families open to Children’s Services, predominantly for early intervention/early help relating to some of the most complex issues families face. These may include:

• Mental health concerns
• Domestic abuse
• Social isolation
• Drug and alcohol issues
• Learning disabilities
• Financial pressures

Any of these issues can have a significant impact on the stability of family life, and may affect the health, wellbeing, routines and development of all family members. Volunteers will provide non-judgemental support to enable change within the home, helping build positive habits and behaviours.

Family Support Volunteering could include:

• Providing tailored practical and emotional support to families who are going through the process of becoming Special Guardians, focusing on preventing further family breakdown and promoting stability for children.
• Supporting the work of Children’s Services when reuniting children in care with their families (going home) by providing practical assistance to facilitate positive parent-child interaction.
• Helping families where children are at risk of exclusion from school to address and support the improvement of behaviours and keep children in education. The amount of support each family requires will vary depending upon their needs and may also include supporting families with organisation skills, attending appointments, meetings and accessing local community activities and to support the families to become independent.

To offer families effective support, we will:

• Get to know you and identify your strengths and skills to enable us to match you to children and families.
• Ask you to commit to weekly support visits for a period of 3-6 months.
• Arrange an introduction meeting, with yourself and a professional who is currently working with the family to meet and talk about the support that you can offer.
• Ask you to adopt a whole family approach which may involve working with the whole family, a few family members, a specific child or children or in some cases just the parent(s)/carer(s).
• Require you to record and share information on your visits with the family, submit expenses and comply with information governance (GDPR) legislation. As an organisation we will:
• Provide full training
• Include you in the matching process
• Provide you with ongoing, high quality and timely support
• Pay travel costs and mileage expenses

Training

All volunteers receive full training to enable them to fulfil their role:

• Volunteer Induction (1 day, in person)
• Safeguarding (included in induction and reviewed on an annual basis)
• Family Support-specific (1 day, in person)

In addition, specialist training will be made available as appropriate to support you.

A team of Hampshire County Council Volunteer Coordinators will provide guidance, advice and supervision.