I spent some time deciding on what Charities I would want to support when I became Mayor and particularly wanted ones that were local and involved with young people and families.
Bringing up children has never been easy and for all the bad press young people receive nowadays I think we forget that they will eventually be ‘in charge’ and we should give them all the help and support we can.

Therefore when I was contacted by Rosemary Ferguson Chairman of Homestart and learnt about the excellent work this charity does supporting families with young children who are experiencing a crisis of some form or other it was an easy decision to make.
The support is given by a team of trained volunteers on a one to one basis and is only available in Burton at the moment but they would like to be able to expand this much needed service into Uttoxeter.

Harvey Girls is a local organisation that supports Pregnant Women and Mums aged under 21.
The activities are centred on health and I saw this at the High Street venue when I visited and watched a practical cookery lesson taking place run by one of the volunteers.
This meant the girls could then sit down to a healthy meal they had helped prepare. Life skills such as this that I take for granted can make all the difference to these young mums and their babies.
They also explained about how important they found the crèche facility, and how difficult they found it attending say, a local mother and toddler group when you were 16 and the average age of the other women attending was over 35. These young mums suffer much stigmatism in their daily lives and Harvey Girls offers them the support and guidance they need.