Hi Gavo, yes they will to an extent because some of the link value passed to your home page will be shared through the internal links you have on your home page (e.g. via menu navigation) to other pages on your site.
A word of caution though, which you may already be aware of, to be careful when gathering links to your site that they are from good quality sites with relevance to your site. Directory sites and blogs can be prone to being 'thin' in quality and can, if they themselves are seen as spammy sites, not help your site if you are receiving links from them.
I hope that helps,
Peter