Hartford Care’s community grant funds local volunteer recruitment for Home Start Hampshire

Local charity Home Start Hampshire has successfully completed its latest recruitment drive in Alton, thanks to a grant of £1,000 from Hartford Care.

Last year, to celebrate the opening of Alton Place, its new care home on Winchester Road in Alton, Hartford Care launched its inaugural community fund and encouraged local community groups, charities and organisations to apply for the £1,000 grant. Home Start Hampshire, which offers regular support and practical help to families under stress to help give their children the best possible start in life, was the worthy recipient.

Six months on, Ian Wollam, Co-Chair Trustee of Home Start Hampshire, explains how the £1,000 grant has helped them:

“We had been looking at ways to diversify our income and one of our volunteers saw Hartford Care’s community fund initiative in the local paper and we applied straight away. We were so thrilled to be chosen to receive the grant – it’s incredibly gratifying that a local business sees the value of what we do and the grant has gone towards ensuring support in the local area continues to help families in need.

We are never short of families seeking support in the area, and the grant has ensured we’ve been able to help those referred to us and enabled us to raise awareness and reach out to other families needing assistance who aren’t part of our referral network.

It’s no secret that in recent years there’s been a high turnover of volunteers for many charities, with people needing to step back into paid employment or care for dependents, so the grant has also helped support a recruitment drive and we currently have five new volunteers ready to begin their training.

Grants are vital for charities like us, although many grant programmes won’t fund core costs, only specific projects, but the core costs are fundamental in the day-to-day running of the organisation, so it’s been a great help for us to put the money towards this.

We are truly grateful to Hartford Care, the team at Alton Place have gone above and beyond and along with the grant, we’re also able to use the lounge in the home for volunteer and staff meetings – this in itself saves us costs which would otherwise have to be found to fund a venue, meaning we can reinvest back into our service offer.”

— Ian Wollam, Co-Chair Trustee of Home Start Hampshire

Lisa White, Operations Director at Hartford Care, comments:

“We are very proud to support and be a part of our local communities and the work Home Start Hampshire undertakes is invaluable. We’re so pleased to see the grant has helped with many aspects, especially in enabling the charity to highlight its work further in the community and recruit more volunteers to help even more people in the local area.”

— Lisa White, Operations Director at Hartford Care

For more information on Home Start Hampshire:
Phone: 0330 124 2095

For more information on Alton Place:
Winchester Road, Alton, GU34 1RX
Phone: 01420 320 030