About Us

From a child’s birth to growing up and leaving home, parents and carers face new challenges on a daily basis. Whether you’re really struggling and at the end of your tether, or would just like to pick up some new tips and ideas about how to be an even better parent, our online help, information sheets, tailored packs and group courses, will help find something suitable for you and your child.

Our ethos is all about empowering parents – that is, working with and alongside parents, to help them find their own solutions to everyday parenting issues. We do this by recognizing that parents know their children best. Parents and carers can discuss their problems with our specifically trained in house Child Practitioners, who help to guide you through the many pitfalls of parenting!

Health Visitors are typically responsible for the following areas of support:

• listening to, advising and supporting people
• advising and informing new parents on issues such as feeding, safety, physical and emotional development, weaning and immunisation
• delivering child health programmes
• running parenting groups
• working in partnership with families to develop and agree tailored health plans addressing individual parenting and health needs;
• managing and attending parent and baby clinics/sessions at surgeries, community and children's centres, and holding specialist clinics on areas such as baby massage, exercise and child development
• offering counselling to people on issues such as post-natal depression

However, recent findings from the 2009 Ofsted inspection of Cornwall Council found that the shortage of health visitors and school nurses has impacted on the amount of health promotion and health education undertaken with children, young people and families. The key priorities of these staff are appropriately directed towards work with families where there are child protection plans and looked after children. This leaves a significant shortfall in the provision of preventative health support to families.

Our vision for Nurturing Hands is to become an organisation that helps people to stay healthy, as prevention rather than a cure. We aim to be a company that works alongside other organisations in an attempt to offer additional support services to all families in Cornwall, where our services are in partnership, not in competition with these organisations.

Ultimately we anticipate a working partnership with other professionals such as Health Visitors, Midwives, Doctors, Psychologists, Social Workers etc who can refer any family in need, if they do not have the capacity to provide the support the family so desperately need.

We have recently secured a contract and become a partner of the FLAG (Families Learning and Growing) Project, which is funded by Cornwall Council through the European Social Fund. This funding enables Nurturing Hands to offer our services free of charge to any parent who works over 8 hours a week, lives in Cornwall and is over 16 years old.

We also have contracts with Children’s Centres and Happy Days Nurseries across Cornwall.

Nurturing Hands wants to work in collaboration with the Cornwall Children and Young People’s Strategic Partnership Board and the Children’s Trust to achieve continuous improvement in service provision and outcomes for children and young people. This invaluable relationship with core agencies will improve our credibility and secure our future within the Health and Social Care Sector.

Depending on our success in Cornwall, we would like to see Nurturing Hands becoming a nationwide Support Agency, with franchises throughout the country. My passion of working with families to support them at their time of need, has encouraged me to push the boundaries and test my personal limitations to ensure that this business succeeds. My sheer determination and belief that families everywhere will one day benefit from our services will only continue this enthusiasm and drive.

So....watch this space for more news on Nurturing Hands' continued success!