Home-Start Falkirk is a local charity that, for many years, has worked across communities to provide support for families with young children who are facing difficulties. When they were looking to provide accredited training and upskilling to members of their own staff, as well as to local families they support, they spoke to Falkirk Council's Employment and Training Unit (ETU) to find out what was available.

Through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, ETU has been able to provide funding, as well as its own wraparound specialist employability support to Home-Start.

Sharon Frederickson, Chief Executive Officer at Home-Start had already identified a range of training needs across the staff team, as well as training that could be provided to families supported by the charity. This included baby massage, sleep counselling, ASN training, advanced Excel and bid writing. In this year alone sleep counselling has been delivered to 12 families and baby massage to 17 families in both one to one and group sessions. The Home-Start team is also confident to deliver weekly ASN peer support sessions for the parents of ASN children and run a weekly sensory class/drop-in session for children with additional support needs.

Sharon comments: "As with many third sector organisations funding for staff training is tight and without ETU support, we wouldn’t have achieved many of our outcomes last year. The bid writing training that the manager completed was a huge success, they went on to write successful funding applications to the National Lottery and the Trusthouse Foundation and others, which has ensured sustainability for the charity and staff for the next three years."

She continues: "This is a great way to support local in-work people to improve their employability skills, gain qualifications to enhance their own career progression. For Home-Start, it has also supported the business, which in turn ensures sustainability not only for our employees but for the support offered to families and children in our community. The ETU support worker – Dan Hughes, was friendly, informative and kept us up to date with everything, making the process easy."