Home-Start in Suffolk

Fundamentally, our vision is that every child in Suffolk is given the best start in life because of the love, support and guidance they receive from their parents, guardians or the people performing the role of their parents. We focus on the early years because it is well known that the first 1,001 days of a child’s life, from conception to age 2, are fundamental to laying the foundations for a child to lead a happy and healthy life. During these first 1,000 days, a child’s physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and behavioural foundations are laid, and perhaps more importantly, a trajectory is established. Interventions up to the age of 5 are equally as important in continuing to lay those critical foundations. As children start school, they begin a new stage of relationships and interactions; with other children and new adults. These years can bring challenges both for children and for their parents. Risks and adversities include parental conflict in the home or bullying at school. A further window of opportunity to redress and build, therefore, exists between the ages of 7 and 12. As children enter adolescence and eventually adulthood, cycles of adversity can continue. They can be broken but the opportunity exists in the early years to establish the foundations to prevent these cycles from being established. A child’s exposure to stresses, adversity or destructive behaviour whether they be directed at the children themselves or take place between parents, can stay with children throughout their lives, detrimentally affecting them personally, how they interact with others and even might be passed on to the next generation if they become parents. We believe the best opportunity to break cycles of adversity, reduce the likelihood of children passing on their negative experiences to their children and improve the health and wellbeing of our society occurs in the early years of being a child and those first few years of being a parent and a family. To achieve this, our vision is to empower parents, guardians and those performing the role of being parents with the skills, knowledge and emotional resilience to raise children to flourish.