Who We Are

About us

Home-Start Barnet, Brent and Harrow is an independent charity that helps families with children through their challenging times. We are part of the Home-Start UK family; a national network of charities working in 71% of local authority areas across the UK.

We support families in the boroughs of Barnet, Brent and Harrow who are facing issues such as loneliness, isolation, financial difficulties, anxiety, post-natal depression, ill health, multiple births, or disabilities. We help them grow in confidence, strengthen their relationships with their children and forge links with the local community. 

Since opening in October 1997, we have supported almost 3,500 families (including more than 7,000 children) and have recruited and trained 563 volunteers from the boroughs we work in.   

Our approach

Early intervention can significantly increase a child’s chances of growing up happy and healthy, which in turn helps the wellbeing of their community and lessens the burden on local services.  

Our core work is with families with (at least) one child under five. Trained volunteers visit the family once a week, supporting them in a variety of emotional and practical ways. We also work with families with older children by delivering parenting programmes focussing on strengthening parenting skills, such as positive discipline and confidence.  To see a list of our current programmes, please click here. 

 We are:

Our referral process

We often receive our referrals from social care agencies, such as a family’s health visitor or social worker. However, we also work with families who have self-referred when things have become too hard for them to carry on as they are.  

Once we receive a referral, our Family Support Coordinators will be in touch with the family and will then match a volunteer to that family. Our volunteers are fully trained and receive ongoing support, so our families feel secure in the confidential support they offer.  

If you feel you need support, please reach out to us using our referral form here.   

If you would like to become a volunteer and help make a difference to a local family, please read more about our volunteer work here.  

Our Patron,

Martin H.C. Russell DL TCT

Martin was invited to become Patron of Home-Start Barnet, Brent, Enfield and Harrow in 2009.

In business, he gained treasury and corporate finance experience in banking, and then in two FTSE 100 corporates and a mortgage bank.

Through Russell & Associates, he has provided financial and business education to institutions, including: domestic and overseas regulatory bodies, central banks and markets, insurance brokers, underwriters, major law firms; corporations (among them Financial Times and Thomson Reuters); the public sector (government departments and agencies, the Bank of England, City of London Corporation); and to prominent individuals.

Since 2002, he has been the Course Director of the renowned Financial Times’ ‘Introducing the City’ evening programme.  He has delivered five annual programmes for Members of Parliament and for Members of the House of Lords on behalf of the Industry & Parliament Trust. He lectures regularly at Middlesex University Business School and at the London Stock Exchange.

Martin has been a Fellow of the Association of Corporate Treasurers since 1981.

Among the financial trade bodies to which he belongs are CSFI and SIMA.

In 2006 he was commissioned as one of Her Majesty’s Deputy Lieutenants of Greater London.  He is patron, president, chairman or a trustee of a sizeable number of uniformed and civilian voluntary organisations.

Despite alleged technophobia, he became a Certificated Financial Information Associate of the SIIA.  He gained the post-graduate FT Non-Executive Director Diploma in 2013. A liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Farriers, he received an Honorary Doctorate from Middlesex University in July 2015.