I wouldn't be here without Home-Start, mum tells TV's Tracy Beaker

Home-Start Berkshire East celebrates its 30th birthday later this year.

"There will be cake," group manager Alison Bowers promises Tracy Beaker actor Dani Harmer on a recent visit as part of her work with Comic Relief.

Perhaps more importantly, there will also be Eve Murphy. Originally a client of the charity, she now volunteers to advise and support other parents struggling with their new found responsibilities.

"If it wasn't for Home-Start, I probably wouldn't have been here today, because I'd been through such a lot," she told Dani.

Eve's eldest child was less than a year old when a baby sister came along. To make things harder, the newborn had a condition called Pierre Robin Sequence.

That meant she had a small lower jaw, cleft palate and a tongue that would fall backwards, blocking the throat and airway.

For her first year, the youngster have to be fed via a tube and Eve found she grew fearful of leaving the house.

"It was a nerve-wracking time, when you are out and about with people staring at you, watching you," she said.

Then Donna, a volunteer from Home-Start called on her.

"Donna said don't worry about it. You're a mum, doing what you need to do for your children."

In the three decades Home-Start has been running in Slough, the need for its support has increased.

The team said recent years have seen more and more people arriving in the town with all their worldly possessions stuffed into black bin liners.

Previously living in London, they have been rehoused in Berkshire because of the cost of finding them accommodation close to their previous homes.

"Look at that," said one member of staff, pointing out of the window of the room that serves as a combined office and store room, at the group's town centre site.

"That used to be a car park. Now it's a block of what they call apartments."

Worse still are the redundant office buildings that have been converted into flats. Not only do they lack any outside space for children to play, often they do not even have opening windows.

Families are typically supported for between three and six months.

"The great thing about coming here is they have a chance to meet other mums and that means they can build a friendship group," explained Alison.

"You often see them exchanging numbers and then they'll WhatsApp one another, because you just need a friend don't you?

"When things are hard, you just want someone to say 'I've been there. I know what it's like'."

Mum Zainab told Dani she had felt isolated as a young mum, with all her extended family living overseas.

Coming to the group had not only helped her, but also her 18-month-old son, Zeehan, who she described as being very "clingy" after a difficult birth.

"He wouldn't get off my lap and just look at him now," she said, gesturing across the room to where the little boy was busy in a toy kitchen.

"He plays on his own, he feeds himself. He's so independent."

Dani, who has two young children herself and recently moved away from Bracknell where she grew up, said she understood the value of the organisation and the links it helped its clients forge.

"They say it takes a village to raise a child," she said looking at mums and children all around her during a morning session. "It really does and what a village they have here!"

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