Families

Parent and child reading together by Dave Warren

We are very aware that parents are any child's first and most enduring educators. There's plenty of research which shows how important parents are for their children's learning and development. Where parents are involved in their children's learning, children do better at school.1

For all children, the quality of the home learning is more important for intellectual and social development than parental occupation, education or income, according to a report from the Department for Education and Skills2

One of the best things parents can do to support their children is to read together at home. This starts with babies. Parents who introduce their babies to books give them a head start in school.3 It continues as children grow, with reading aloud, sharing books and much loved bedtime stories. Research shows that parental involvement continues to be important well into the teenage years and even into adulthood.4

Librarians, teachers, early years workers, family learning tutors and others concerned with education and child development know what a difference reading makes. So to support everyone working with families, we have developed a range of offers to help libraries to engage families in reading.

Our programmes for families:

  • The Big Book Share - using reading to bring together families separated by imprisonment.
  • The Six Book Challenge - helping adults with literacy needs to gain confidence with reading, and being used successfully in a growing number of family settings, as a focus for children and adults to grow their reading together.
  • The Summer Reading Challenge - the biggest national promotion of children's reading through libraries. An ideal way to engage families to support their children and expand their reading too.
  • Chatterbooks - reading groups for four to 12 year-olds, which offer a great way to involve parents too.
  • groupthing.org - online reading groups for young people aged 11 up to 18
  • Family Reading groups - where adults and their children can come together to share and build their reading experiences.
  • Training opportunities - we offer a range of training courses which support libraries and their partners in working with families - see our training page for current offers.

"Libraries are just totally different for my children than for when I was a child - you weren't allowed to speak! If you go to our library over the summer, adult customers can barely move for children rushing around looking at books, cutting and sticking and making things. I think that's really good." Debbie Jarrett, Yaxley library, Cambridgeshire

1. (Fan & Chen, 2001); (Feinstein & Symons, 1999), (Melhuish, Sylva, Sammons et al., 2001).
2. Sylva,K., Melhuish,E., Sammons,P., Siraj-Blatchford,I. & Taggart, B. (2004). Effective provision of pre-school education (EPPE) project: Final Report. London: DfES.
3. (Wade & Moore, 2000).
4. (Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003).