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Get Support for Your Family
Home‑Start Shepway helps parents and children through life’s toughest times with compassionate, practical, and confidential support.
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Who We Support
Families often reach us at a point when life feels overwhelming from several directions.
This year, we’ve supported parents in those early years navigating a mix of practical pressures, emotional strain, and early years challenges that affect daily family life. Most of the families we work with have children under eight, and many are coping with poor mental health one of the leading reasons for referral into our service. A significant proportion live in the most deprived neighbourhoods across Folkestone, Hythe and Romney Marsh, where financial insecurity, isolation and limited access to services compound everyday stress.
We are also seeing increasing numbers of children with delayed speech, language or social development, alongside parents who have very limited support networks or, in some cases, no meaningful adult contact at all. This mirrors national evidence showing that only 37% of parents with children under five often or always have meaningful social contact a pattern strongly reflected in our local communities.
Together, these pressures create a landscape where families need relational, consistent, and accessible support. Home‑Start Shepway is stepping into that gap, offering the kind of early, trusted help that makes a tangible difference to parents and young children.
The Rural Project
Funded by the Kent Community Foundation, the Rural Project reaches families living in rural and isolated areas, particularly in Romney Marsh. Families can access support one-to-one or in groups within their local community.
Our group at Dymchurch School is open to all families with preschool children.
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