Local campaigners have launched a petition to save the local charity ‘Home-Start Bury’. This is a charity which supports local families by offering support, friendship and practical help to parents with young children.
Bury Council funded Home-Start thorugh it’s ‘Commissioning Fund’ for a period of three years starting in 2013/14. That came to an end on 31 March 2016. During this period Homestart received a total of £69,000 from the Commissioning Fund.
This is the statement from the Trustees of Home-Start from their Facebook Page”
“It is with much sadness that the Board of Trustees has taken the difficult decision to close Home-Start Bury. This is due to a 100% cut to zero in our funding by Bury MBC.
The Impact is 70 families lose vital support, 3 staff loses their jobs, and 50 highly trained volunteers lost to the community.
When Home-Start Bury closes, there will be no other early intervention services to support families in the same way that Home-Start does: offering personalised parent-to-parent support in the confidential environment of the family home during weekly visits for as long as the family needs support for. This early intervention approach stops many families from reaching crisis point and needing costly statutory support.
The Staff and Board have exhausted every possible avenue for funding, but to no avail. External grant makers like BBC Children in Need, Big Lottery and Lloyds TSB prefer to have some reassurance that there is at least some commitment from Statutory services…so in effect, the cut in our funding is preventing us from bringing £££££ in to the Borough.
Our hearts goes out to those families as well as our brilliant staff and volunteers.
All families and volunteers are aware of the situation and support is being offered to signpost families to other local facilities like the children’s centers.
We have written to the relevant officers within the Local Authority and elected members of the council. As yet, we have not had any responses.
If you are a council tax payer in Bury, please write to your local councillor if you think this is wrong.
You can also follow us on twitter @homestartbury
Thank you for all the messages of support we have had so far, we are overwhelmed with peoples kindness x”
Online Petition
An online petition has been set up to support the charity. If enough people sign the petition it will trigger a formal debate on the issue at the Town Hall.
You can read the petition and add your support here.