Helping families in crisis

The Rotary Club of Middleton presents Home-Start (Rochdale) with £400

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The Rotary Club of Middleton presented Home-Start (Rochdale), a family support charity with £400 to be used to assist vulnerable families in Middleton providing practical help and support through difficult times.

Established in 1973, Home-Start is a national charity with schemes in hundreds of local communities including the Home-Start (Rochdale) covering Rochdale, Heywood, Middleton and the Pennines.

For the last 13 years Home-Start (Rochdale) has been working in partnership with statutory and voluntary organisations to help parents build better lives for their children.

Home-Start helps all kinds of families who find it hard to cope for all sorts of reasons, such as illness or disability of a child or learning difficulty of a parent, family breakdown, post-natal depression, bereavement, loneliness or family crisis.

Home-Start recruits and trains volunteers to help families with young children.

Home-Start volunteers support parents by visiting them in their homes for a couple of hours each week.

Sharon Pearson, Finance Officer, Home-Start (Rochdale) said: “I have never seen it this bad in the 11 years I have been working at Home-Start. This is the worst we have experienced; families in our community are really struggling and our resources are being over-stretched. We need more help and we are looking to our local community to support us to help families in their neighbourhoods. 

Asked about the Rotary donation to Home-Start Donna Arden, Scheme Manager Home-Start (Rochdale) said: “We will use the Rotary funds to provide help, for Middleton families facing challenging situations, where other agencies struggle to respond to their needs as soon as the crisis happens. It might be a family new to the area that has fled domestic violence, who has taken little with them. We may need to help pull together some basic toiletries and a small food parcel to keep them going. The funds will be used to help as many families as we possibly can.

"I appreciate Rotary taking such a keen interest in Home-Start and I know our organisations will work together to improve the lives of families all over the borough.” 

Rotarian Tony Gardner said: “The Rotary Club of Middleton is pleased that our Christmas float is able to keep many charities a float during these difficult economic times.

"Rotary will keep in touch with Home-Start to see if we can further assist them to meet the wide ranging needs of families in our area.”