Key Highlights
What was this case study? Home-Start Greenwich evolved its Family Support Service by strengthening structure, consistency and outcomes, with volunteers at the heart of delivering support to families.
Why was the Star chosen? To provide a clear, shared framework for understanding family needs, supporting collaborative conversations and tracking progress towards meaningful, measurable change.
What was the impact? The Family Star Early Years helped create more structured, outcome-focused support, strengthened collaboration with families and partners, and enabled families to see and sustain their progress – often moving to independence within a year.
“I wanted to see change. I wanted it to be measurable… I wanted it to be tangible rather than just being ambiguous.” – Francess Bendu, Head of Scheme
Introducing Home-Start Greenwich
Home-Start Greenwich is part of a national network supporting families facing isolation, hardship or parenting challenges. As part of the Family Support Service, they offer a Home Visiting Scheme where trained volunteers work alongside families, offering practical and emotional support. Volunteers are central to this approach, building trusted relationships and supporting families to engage with services in their local community. In recent years, the service has continued to strengthen and evolve its model, with a growing focus on clarity, consistency and outcomes in how support is delivered.Introducing the Family Star Early Years
As part of this approach, Home-Start Greenwich uses the Family Star Early Years to support structured, collaborative work with families.
The Family Star provides a simple, visual framework for understanding different areas of family life, helping families and practitioners build a shared picture of strengths, challenges and priorities. By supporting clear conversations and agreed action planning, it helps ensure that support is both meaningful and focused on achieving change.
It starts with listening
When Francess Bendu joined as Head of Scheme, her first step was to listen, particularly to the volunteers who worked most closely with families.
“For me the volunteers paved the way for me to understand their experience… they really gave me an insight into where I wanted to go,” says Francess. She reflected on the core question: “What are we actually trying to change when we support a family?”
This listening helped shape a clearer sense of direction for the service. At a time of significant change, including the loss of almost 90% of volunteers during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an opportunity to reflect on how support was delivered to meet families’ needs in a consistent and meaningful way.
From there, the service began to evolve its approach, building strong relationships and volunteer support, while placing a greater emphasis on achieving clear, shared outcomes.
Structuring the service with purpose
This shift in thinking influenced how the service was structured and delivered. Support moved beyond simply ‘being there’ towards a more intentional, collaborative process with families.
“I wanted to see change. I wanted it to be measurable… I wanted it to be tangible rather than just being ambiguous,”says Francess.
Francess introduced a simple but consistent framework for how referrals were handled and how quickly families were contacted and assessments by Coordinators were carried out. The Family Star Early Years was introduced which Francess says was “a game changer”. She also created monitoring and evaluation templates to collect qualitative and quantitative data on the needs of the local community and the vulnerable children and families they supported.
“The framework has helped me to work more collaboratively with families and has given both the family and myself a clearer understanding of their needs, strengths, and priorities.”
The vital role of staff and volunteer engagement
A key part of the service’s evolution was recognising the central role volunteers play in enabling change. Rather than changing that role, the focus became on strengthening it – ensuring volunteers were supported with the skills, confidence and clarity needed to work towards shared goals with families.
Training and ongoing development became a priority. One of these learning opportunities, Flourish Together, invites guest speakers such as midwives, CAMHS professionals, council staff or health visitors to deliver sessions about specific issues.
Francess introduced an employability pathway initiative, designed to create professional progression opportunities for volunteers. This helped committed volunteers to progress to bank opportunities and often permanent positions, supporting workforce sustainability. This has had a huge impact on many volunteers. Francess says, “they started doing professional courses, some have gone into adult college and university. Some are managers now in our children’s centres – people I trained four years ago.”
Mapping progress at Home-Start Greenwich
With the Family Star in place, support conversations became more structured and focused. Reflecting on this shift, Family Support Coordinator, Archana, explains:
“The framework has helped me to work more collaboratively with families and has given both the family and myself a clearer understanding of their needs, strengths, and priorities.”
Before, change was happening, but it wasn’t always easy to see or describe. Practitioners and families could feel progress, but there was no shared way to track it or reflect on it over time. “We were making improvements, but without a structured framework it was harder to demonstrate the journey families had taken in a succinct way, or recognise smaller achievements along the way,” reflects Archana.
Introducing a more structured way of mapping progress helped to change this. It enabled Coordinators, volunteers and families to build a shared picture of where they were starting from, what they were working towards, and how things were improving.
“With the Family Star, they can see their progress. They are part of the journey for there to be change.”
Seeing and celebrating change
The listening, reflection and frameworks that Francess implemented had a direct impact on the families. Rather than feeling like interventions were being done to them, families became active participants in the support they received, with the family voice being central.
Families also became more consistent in engaging with Children’s Centre activities focused on child and parent wellbeing. They were supported to address housing issues, child development and wellbeing and mental health needs. Coordinators and volunteers helped families attend and follow through with appointments, so needs were met earlier and less likely to escalate.
The visual nature of the Star played a key role. Families could see how far they had come, even in small steps. As Sarah, a coordinator, notes: “The simplicity of the Star and having something visual to show to families makes it an easy concept to explain. It is simple for them to understand and, even where English is a second language, families can understand what we are doing”
Reflecting on their own situation and identifying areas for change helped build a stronger sense of ownership and working together and having a voice.
“With the Family Star, they can see their progress. They are part of the journey for there to be change,” says Francess.
Sarah adds, “I believe it is useful that families choose the number they feel suits them (based on discussions with us). I think this makes them feel included in the process, rather than us assessing them which they may interpret as being judged.”
The approach also strengthened multi-agency working. “Now, multi-agency work is central. You cannot achieve great, sustainable support and favourable outcomes without partners such as GPs, midwives, health visitors, CAMHS, social services mental health services, Children’s Centres, immigration teams and community groups. The Family Star has allowed us to embed that,” reflects Francess.
Support to independence
One of the most significant changes for families has been how and when support ends. Previously, support may have continued for years, often without a clear focus and end point.
Now, support for families is more likely to end within a year, often when families themselves feel ready. “Some of the families, when my staff are doing the final review, they say, ‘yeah, I am empowered. You can close now.’ Because that is what we want to hear. The families are ready to move on independently,” says Francess.
Ultimately, the transformation of the Home Visiting Service at Home-Start Greenwich did not come from a single intervention, but from a shift in culture. Greater clarity, stronger structures and better frameworks, combined with leadership grounded in listening, have strengthened practice and improved outcomes.
By investing in volunteers, working collaboratively with families, and keeping a clear focus on meaningful change, the service has built an approach that supports families to move forward with confidence, independence and awareness of services in the community.
Click here to find out more about our Family Star Early Years