Ellie Meek, Steve Marsden, Gemma Law, Liz Kemp, Amy Sills, and Liz Ewart-James 2024

Corporate Volunteer of the Year

Ellie Meek, Home-Start Glasgow South 

Ellie has generously provided free bread and baked breakfast treats to Home-Start Glasgow South’s community club, the Warm Place, twice a week since it opened in October 2022. This has had an incredible impact for the families who access the service, especially in light of the current cost of living crisis. The Warm Place supports local families who are struggling in the current economic climate, providing both practical support and signposting parents and carers to additional support services where necessary. Thanks to Ellie’s contributions, over 60 families have already benefitted from a free breakfast, which they may not have otherwise been able to afford. In addition to the practical benefits, sharing food together has given the families a warm sense of community and a chance to build relationships. 

Digital Volunteer of the Year

Steve Marsden, Home-Start Trafford, Salford & Wigan 

Steve has been volunteering since January 2020 and supports his local Home-Start with all matters of IT support, guiding them in the move to being paperless and helping to streamline work processes and procedures. The new case management system that he has helped to implement has made their work more efficient and productive, and helped them continue to support their service users remotely throughout the pandemic. Steve helped to create an online family record sheet which volunteers could access in order to continue supporting families through the lockdowns, which could easily be updated so that caseworkers could be kept informed of the situation with each family. Steve works closely with the comms team to ensure that the websites are up to date with relevant information for families, which is a vital tool for families to use to receive the support they need. Nothing is too much trouble for Steve, and he is the service’s go to person for any IT needs. 

Group Volunteer of the Year

Gemma Law, Home-Start Suffolk 

Gemma started volunteering around 2 years ago, having been inspired to volunteer as a result of her positive experience as a service user. Despite feeling anxious when she started her volunteering journey, Gemma’s confidence has grown significantly and she has pushed herself to try a range of volunteering roles including home-visiting and leading group sessions. She took part in delivering an 8-week course to vulnerable new mothers and their babies and built a trusting bond with the families she supported, helping them to open up and gain in confidence themselves. Gemma is a huge asset to Home-Start in Suffolk and she receives extremely positive feedback from the families she works with. Her willingness to support as much as she is able is evident through her involvement in a number of groups and her appearance in promotional videos to raise awareness of the work of Home-Start. 

Home-Visitor Volunteer of the Year

Liz Kemp, Home-Start Warrington 

Liz has been volunteering for over 5 years and has made a huge difference to the lives of a number of families in that time. She has helped out at playgroups and pregnancy groups and is always willing to give her time wherever she is needed. Perhaps the most important impact Liz has made is in her time with a family who sadly lost a child at Christmas, making a tremendous difference to them and being an incredible support to them both practically and emotionally. She has been a constant for this family, both being there for emotional support with the parents and also taking the time to interact with their other child so that the parents have time to themselves. The family feel so comfortable around Liz, and she has formed a special bond with them, cuddling the baby so that mum can load the dishwasher or providing a listening ear over a cup of tea. The mum is quoted as saying about Liz, “during the darkest time of my life, she has been a constant ray of light.” 

Home-Start Supporter of the Year

Amy Sills & Mircina Bleniou, Home-Start East Sussex 

Amy and Mircina have been instrumental in launching a peer support service to support survivors of domestic abuse, navigating their own trauma in order to do so. They have made the transition from being supported by Home-Start to supporting others and have used their lived experience to design the groups, whilst also taking care to ensure they are pursuing best practice. This new and vital service would simply not exist without Amy and Mircina and they have taken on more work than would typically be expected of volunteers to get it up and running. This service will allow Home-Start clients to continue their recovery journey in a safe space with other women who understand what they have been through, in a consistent way. In a short space of time, they have already supported 23 women on a weekly basis, who have all reported how important the service is to them. Amy and Mircina have been described by service users as kind, welcoming and uplifting, providing hugely valuable support. 

Trustee of the Year

Liz Ewart-James, Home-Start Stroud & Gloucester 

After a chance encounter at the B&B she ran, Liz was inspired by the ethos of Home-Start to establish a scheme in her local area in 1999, where there had not previously been one. Since then, she has served unwaveringly as Chair of Trustees, ensuring the long-term sustainability of her charity and leaving an indelible mark on the families she serves. She regularly organises fundraising events and builds important relationships within the community where she can secure additional opportunities for her charity. When Liz retired in 2016, she used her considerable contacts in the judicial, medical and social work circles to arrange a conference for all child care services in Gloucestershire which was attended by over 130 people. Thanks to her drive and commitment, Home-Start schemes have spread across the whole of Gloucestershire, meaning that hundreds more local families can receive the support that they need. Liz has been a constant presence and inspiration for over 20 years and is endlessly enthusiastic and refreshingly optimistic about the future for families in her local area.