CHRISTMAS has come early for one Herefordshire charity after being given a grant from the company which owns the Hereford Times.

The Gannett Foundation UK- the charitable arm of Gannett Co Inc - has awarded £1,760 to Home-Start Herefordshire towards training 20 home visit volunteers who will help support families to lead healthier lives.

Gannett is the parent company of Newsquest Media Group, which is one of the UK's largest publishers and owner of the Hereford Times.

A total of £16,000 has been given away in the region and overall £300,000 has been given to charities up and down the UK.

Home-Start Herefordshire is based at Thorn Business Park in Rotherwas and offers a unique service - recruiting and training volunteers who in turn offer support, friendship and practical help to families who are experiencing difficulties and problems, are under stress and who have children up to 18-years-old.

Home-Start aims to prevent neglect and ensure children’s emotional, physical and educational needs are better met. The charity offers families both emotional and practical support through its early intervention programme of home-visiting and group work ensuring positive outcomes for children and families using our service.

The funding of £1,760 will provide 20 home-visiting volunteers six hours of training on supporting families to lead healthier lifestyles (outreach volunteer support).

Trained healthy lifestyle volunteers will support families living in Herefordshire to eat more healthily and increase a family’s uptake of physical activities and exercise.

Topics covered include: eating healthily on a budget, overcoming barriers to lead a healthy lifestyle, supporting families to take part in more physical activities, supporting parents to stop smoking, and encourage Change4Life.

The volunteers will also deliver Healthy Eating and Parenting Healthy Lifestyle workshops.

These workshops will cover healthy meals on a budget, cooking with seasonal produce, healthy lunchboxes, healthy family meals, dental health, improved health and fitness and infant nutrition.

It will support 30 parents (60 adults and children) to make healthy lifestyle choices and will run until May 2018.

Over the last ten years, Newsquest has given more than £3 million to help charitable community causes all over the country, from Scotland and Northern Ireland to London and the West Country.

The trustees who make the grants agonised for days to make difficult choices from a stack of deserving applications, but narrowed the list down to those which they thought would deliver the most worthwhile practical benefits to communities served by Newsquest’s local news brands.

The Gannett Foundation UK, which makes the grants, retains a modest reserve to cater for urgent applications until the next round of awards in November 2018. Applications can be made through any local Newsquest Media Group editor.