No single organisation can create change on its own. That’s why Home-Start Cymru works closely with organisations across Wales to share learning, develop collective solutions and ensure family experiences shape policy and practice.
Our Strategic Partnerships
We work alongside national and local partners to improve outcomes for babies, children and families, including:
Save the Children
We work closely with Save the Children to improve outcomes for children and families across Wales. This includes connecting families to emergency financial support, sharing evidence and insights on family experiences, and advocating together on issues including child poverty, early intervention and access to nature. Joint work has included engagement around Wales’ Child Poverty Strategy and the Cynnal payment pilot.
Maternal Mental Health Alliance
We work with the Maternal Mental Health Alliance to raise awareness of perinatal mental health and advocate for better support during the first 1000 days. This has included contributing to Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week activities, supporting the Midwives Go Miles campaign and speaking publicly about gaps in support for families across Wales.
Trauma-Informed Wales
Home-Start Cymru contributed evidence to the development of the Wales Trauma-Informed Framework and has been featured by Public Health Wales for our trauma-informed approach to supporting families through compassionate, relationship-based practice.
NEST/NYTH Framework
We played an active role in testing and shaping the NEST/NYTH self-assessment process, bringing together staff, volunteers and trustees to provide feedback and help strengthen implementation of the framework’s whole-system approach to children’s mental health and wellbeing.
Groups and Networks:
Cross Party Group on Fathers Wellbeing & Family Resilience
Since, the beginning of the seventh Senedd, we have invested time in building strong relationships with Members of the Senedd (MSs) to identify key advocates to our policy calls. Through this engagement work, several MSs have committed to working together with us on a new Cross Party Group on Fathers Wellbeing and Family Resilience. Home-Start Cymru acts as secretariat for the Cross-Party Group , which brings together six Senedd Members from across four political parties, aswell as stakeholders from a breadth of sectors, to explore gaps in support for fathers and develop solutions that improve outcomes for babies, children and families.
Early Intervention and Prevention Framework Working Group:
We are also active in occasional sub-groups and workstreams where opportunities present to work collaboratively on relevant pieces of work. One example of this includes the Early Intervention & Prevention multi-sector working group we sat on, which focused on developing a framework to provide an overarching definition for both Early Intervention, and one for Prevention which can be adapted across sectors.
The intention of the framework is to understand and preserve services which are universal, primary, secondary and targeted where required when babies, children and young people need them, at the right time, delivered in the right way, as part of a full offer across Wales. We were part of the process in co-designing the framework alongside community, voluntary, and public sector leaders across Wales with the support of Welsh Government.
Additionally, we have active membership roles in the following collaborative forums:
- Children and Young People’s NGO Policy officers group chaired by Children in Wales
- Perinatal Mental Health Board – NHS Executive
- End Child Poverty Network
- Child Poverty Strategy Reference Group, Welsh Government
- Early Years Action Group, Children in Wales,
- WCVA Policy Forum
- NEST/NYTH Community of Practice
- Cross-Party Group on Poverty
- Cross-Party Group on Maternity
- Cross-Party Group on Babies, Children and Families
- Cross-Party Group on the Voluntary Sector