Home-Start Oxford is a charity that provides free, confidential support for families with at least one child under the age of 5 in Oxford, and the centre and west of the county.

We help ordinary people who are going through extraordinary times.

Being a parent has never been easy. Regardless of social standing, gender or culture, it can be lonely, frustrating, heart-breaking and over-whelming. Everyone needs help sometimes, and with our team of experienced volunteers and staff we provide non-judgmental, compassionate support for parents when they need us most.

There is no such thing as a typical Home-Start family and the support we offer is as individual as the families themselves. We help families through challenges that include mental health issues, illness, disability, autism, multiple births, relationship stress, refugeehood, social and rural isolation, domestic abuse, addiction, debt, trauma and poverty.

With Covid and now the cost of living crisis our services have never been more in demand.

We help through free one-to-one support as well as running a number of free weekly groups for children and their parents or carers.

We thought you might like to see this short video here that was produced by West Oxfordshire District Council. They interviewed a mum who attended one of our baby groups as part of their Be Kind to your Mind annual campaign.

There is also a great video from Home-Start UK - the broad umbrella charity that covers all of the Home-Start charities in the UK here.

We keep children at the heart of everything that we do because childhood cant wait.