Home-Start Salford Selected as

Bovis Constructions nominated

Charity for Christmas Gifts
(December 2006)

The week leading up to the closure of the scheme for the Christmas holidays is usually a quiet one. Not this time!!!

Home-Start Salford received an email from Bovis Construction asking someone to contact them.

Lynn Meadowcroft, Scheme Manager at the time, wasted no time and was on the phone within minutes of receiving the email!

Lynn found out that Home-Start Salford had been selected as Bovis’s nominated charity and was told that all Bovis staff had been asked to buy an ‘extra present’ which would be donated to Home-Start. All presents would be collected by Monday 18^th December for Lynn to collect and deliver to families in Salford.

What Lynn didn’t know was that a second Company Travelcare would be ringing Lynn on the 18^th December to donate all the toys they had been collecting for the past 6 weeks. These toys were collected by Home-Start Salford on the 19^th December.

The Co-ordinators office looked more like a giant Santa’s Grotto than an office!

With 2 Co-ordinators on annual leave and a 3^rd to be taken poorly the team were down to 3 staff! – Lynn and her 2 admin staff. It took them 2 days o deliver all the presents to families!! One was driving, one was map reading and Lynn was Mrs Santa delivering the presents!!!

Ir was a week we will never forget for many different reasons! It was hard work. We never stopped but it was all worth it to see the look of surprise and gratitude on the families faces.

Bovis told Lynn that Home-Start Salford would be their nominated charity again next year!!

Home-Start Salford would like to say a HUGE THANK YOU to Bovis Construction and Travelcare.

You made a lot of children very happy.

Home-Start Salford Win Prestigious Kite Mark for ‘Towards Excellence in Volunteering’
(December 2006)

Home-Start Salford have recently completed an exciting and innovative new 12 month project. ‘Towards Excellence in Volunteering: Diversity Through Good Practice Programme’.

In 2006, the Scheme Manager at the time submitted an application to apply to become only one of 5 voluntary and Community Sector Organisations to join this new project. The application was successful and Home-Start along with 4 other projects were selected from the whole of Salford!

A requirement of the programme was a commitment from the organisation for the Manager, a volunteer and a Trustee to take part in moving the organisation forward through the programme and to undergo training.

So the Scheme Manager, Donna (a home visiting volunteer for 4 years) and Bob, our Chair at the time, committed to the project.

"The programme has been hard work and to be honest if I had known how much work was involved before I sent the application off, I might have reconsidered applying!!"

Included in the programme were:

§          Hands on consultancy looking at where the organisation feels it could improve in terms of good practice and diversity and what existing practices might be acting as a barrier to different groups becoming involved

§          Identifying distinct outcomes in relation to improving good practice and diversity, which can be realistically achieved by the end of the programme

§          Training covering the meaning of diversity, its application in the context of volunteer improvement, practical ways to improve diversity including constructive tools to challenge discrimination

§          Training covering a range of good practice issues (covering common themes identified amongst all participants as of particular relevance)

§          Subsequent to training further in-depth support from a Volunteering Development Worker to enable the organisation to move towards the outcomes initially identified and to complete the programme

§          Producing a Portfolio which evidenced all the work you had done

And finally, as if all that wasn’t enough, the 3 amigos had to go before a panel of 4 people (some Salford Big Wigs!) to be interviewed about the project.

It was at this interview they were told we had passed with flying colours and the panel were ‘very impressed’ with all the work that had gone into the Portfolio.

An awards ceremony was held in February 2007 and the local press were invited (another visit to the makeover team!)

Now that the ceremony is over we have been awarded with the Kite Mark Logo which we can use on all our literature and which we are hoping will attract volunteers, trustees, referrals and FUNDING!!