Margaret Harrison CBE – Women’s History Month

Margaret Harrison, Home-Start Bedfordshire

For Women’s History Month, we want to share with you the story of Margaret Harrison CBE (1938–2015). Her idea, Home-Start, which started in a Leicester home, changed the lives of millions of families around the world.

Back in the early 1970s, Margaret was a full-time mother volunteering in Leicester with playgroups, children’s homes and child guidance clinics. She had no formal background in social work or any related discipline. Yet, she noticed that many parents felt alone and under pressure. Importantly, she observed that help from professionals often arrived too late or felt critical rather than supportive.

“What I learned was that what they longed for most was to have a friend – another parent who would understand them and, in an informal way, would help them feel more confident as parents.”

Margaret Harrison (Leicester Mercury, 2013)

Margaret Harrison, 2004, visits Home-Start Bedfordshire

In 2004, Margaret Harrison visited to speak at our local charity’s Annual General Meeting. At the time, we were celebrating 20 years of Home-Start in Leighton Buzzard and also gaining the Investors in People Award.

In 1973, Margaret won a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust fellowship. This enabled her to travel to the United States to research different approaches to family support. When she returned, she secured a grant and started the first Home-Start project in Leicester that November.

The name Home-Start came about as “everything else happened in centres or offices. Many families had told me that they needed me to see them at home. So we said it would be important to start at home. Also we would only focus on families where there was at least one child under school age, at the start of their lives.”

Margaret Harrison

Early Intervention

Margaret Harrison founded Home-Start on a transformative belief: the best place to support a parent is in their own home. By shifting the focus from formal systems to compassionate, peer-to-peer support, she proved that a little help today can prevent a crisis tomorrow. Her legacy of early intervention ensures that children get a better start, that parents get the support they need, and that long-term strains on social services are reduced.

The values she set out are still at the heart of Home-Start today:

Home-Visiting: Support is delivered in the family’s own environment.
Volunteer-Led: Support is provided by trained volunteers, often parents themselves.
Non-Judgmental: The relationship is based on trust, humanity, and humour.
Early Intervention: Helping families before challenges escalate into crises.

“Ordinary human beings have an extraordinary capacity to give and to share. Kindness, caring, a sense of humour, optimism, respect, trust: all those human qualities are central to our work… So, our central philosophy is to be kind to those who need our support and help.”

Margaret Harrison

At Home & Abroad

By 2015, Home-Start had 288 local schemes across the UK, helping more than 33,000 families and 70,000 children every year. Margaret also set up Home-Start International (now called Home-Start Worldwide) in 1998 to meet growing interest from other countries. Since then, the idea has spread to 22 countries across five continents, including Japan, Sri Lanka, Norway, and Tanzania.

Home-Start has attracted high-profile supporters, ranging from the British Royal Family to household names in literature and broadcasting. These figures have played a crucial role in championing Margaret Harrison’s vision of compassionate, parent-to-parent support. Princess Diana was a passionate patron of Home-Start in the 1980s and 90s. Her involvement was a natural fit for the ‘people’s princess’, as the charity focused on the raw, often hidden struggles of domestic life.

Following Princess Diana, Princess Alexandra became the charity’s Royal Patron. She has been a consistent presence for decades, often signing the certificates for the National Volunteer Awards and attending gala events to celebrate the network’s growth. While not an official patron, the Princess of Wales has become one of the charity’s most influential modern allies. Through the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, she has collaborated closely with Home-Start, visiting local schemes.

Life President

Margaret led the charity for 25 years before stepping back in 1998 to serve as Life President. Margaret was also a follower of the resurgence peace and ecology movement. It has roots in the anti-war and nonviolent resistance movements, and has grown into a major voice for environmentalism, social justice, and holistic thinking. She was awarded an OBE in 1989 and a CBE in 2001 for her work. In 2004, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from The Open University for her public services and work in areas of special educational concern to the university.

Even as her health declined, she remained involved, judging awards and attending conventions right up until her passing in August 2015. Today, Home-Start stands alongside charities like the NSPCC and Barnardo’s in its contribution to child welfare.

Do you believe every child deserves the best start in life?

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