Home Start: Local Volunteers to Prevent Child Abuse

Yesterday I attended "Child Abuse Meeting" held by APCA in Osaka.
I learned about "Home-Start", volunteer activities to prevent child abuse.
It originated in the UK, and some citizens in Kumatori, Osaka are also doing that kind of activities.

Generally in Japan, the experts of child abuse are busy dealing with actual abuse.
However, child abuse is often caused by stressful conditions, and that kind of conditions can occur in any families.
A Home-Start group consists of some experts and volunteer citizens who have raised children.
They visit some families who have troubles raising children.
They talk about raising children and do some of the houseworks together.

In the modern society, some families often have no choice but to move to another ditrict.
They have no friends and get isolated.
The Home-Start activities mainly focus on these kind of isolated families.
Though they CAN get help from some of the local facilities, they DON'T, because they have no connection to the local community.

I hope this kind of activities help to prevent child abuse.