Bookstart Dads

Background

1. Cornwall's Bookstart provision is part of Family Learning which is based in the Adult Education section of the County Council. Bookstart is run as a partnership between different agencies, which includes Family Services, the Library Service, the Primary Care Trust and is partially funded by the European Social Fund, Objective One . The strategic direction of Bookstart is governed by a steering group which includes representatives from the partner organisations

2, In 2005 Family Learning submitted a European Social Fund, Objective 1, bid for the Family Learning Years Project ( FLY). The decision to include Bookstart in the scope of this bid was based on the recognition that children can only benefit from the Bookstart packs if their parents have adequate learning skills and motivation to access books with their children. Bookstart had previously been coordinated by the Library Service but funding was inadequate, and coverage was patchy and dependent on the priority that could be given by individual libraries. Several libraries are open on a part time basis and in isolated rural areas and this limited the capacity to develop partnerships with health visitors. The library service was therefore hampered in meeting delivery targets due to libraries having insufficient resources and the logistical difficulties posed by the geography of the county.

3. The ESF bid was successful and attracted funding over a two and a half year period. The additional funding for FLY has allowed the development of targeted work with learners who are unemployed or working less than 16 hours per week and want to improve their basic skills. The project is delivered through a FLY coordinator and a team of development tutors and the Bookstart team, consisting of a Coordinator, admin and delivery driver. This project is closely linked to the broader county wide strategy for the integration of services to children and families set out in the CYPP delivered through the multi agency Cornwall Children and Young People's Partnership. A key plank of this strategy has been the development of local children's centres which act as a hub for the delivery of services to local children and their families and a base for the services provided by other professionals working within the communities.

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Bookstart in Cornwall

4. Bookstart in Cornwall is delivered by a full time coordinator, a part time administrative officer and a part time van driver. There is a multi agency Bookstart steering group which includes representatives of all key partners, and other stakeholders – the Library Service, Family Learning, Family Services, Pre-School Learning Alliance and the Primary Care Trust. A main objective of the ESF bid was to take Bookstart beyond being a delivery service and use Bookstart packs as a catalyst for families to enjoy books with their children and to help children develop a lifelong learning of books. Through the gifting of Bookstart packs parents are informed about, and invited to, attend Story sacks courses to help them support their child's enjoyment of books and early reading and ultimately raise their own skills and self esteem. Bookstart work with many hard to reach groups and is proactive in reaching families that do not access mainstream provision. For parents and carers with low skills Bookstart is used as a springboard to access further learning opportunities delivered by the family learning development tutors, delivering courses across the whole county. Bookstart and Family Learning are therefore also springboards for raising the aspirations of adults and children and in helping parents support their children's development wellbeing and achievement, whilst at the same time developing their own skills.

5. The Bookstart coordinator, Heather Hunt, actively prioritises partnership

building recognising that the delivery of Bookstart and Family Learning outcomes can only be achieved by all Early Years services understanding the contribution they each make to the achievement of the Every Child Matters outcomes and by acting as ambassadors for each other. The Bookstart coordinator fosters the development of excellent networking through the delivery of familiarisation courses for all early years partners, by involvement with existing networks and through informal contacts. She is on regular contact with health care workers, children's centres, specialist workers with the travelling and migrant family communities, special need provision, private and voluntary sector providers, libraries and Family Services, including the Family Information Service. This work is supported by a comprehensive data base of Bookstart gifters and monthly deliveries. Regular analysis of activity allows the coordinator to identify and chase up areas where activity or take up is lower than it should be or where, for example, dual language packs are not being gifted in areas where it is known that there are populations with English as a second language. As a result there is evidence of effective joined up and strong partnership working, the gifting of packs is in excess of 100% and a 10% increase in library footfall has been directly linked to the work of Bookstart.

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Bookstart and Family Learning

6. FL in Cornwall is a multi agency partnership that has a sensitive approach to learners needs – it is a first step for many who have had bad learning experiences. The provision of ESF funding has allowed expansion of work in the county wide development of children's centres as the focus of multi agency working and one stop shop delivery of services to children and their families. This involves training professionals in Bookstart awareness to ensure a consistent message is promoted to parents across the county. This has been a key factor in engaging parents as it is recognised that parents need to hear the same message from a different source on at least three occasions before they act on the information. Bookstart story sacks act as a first step to raising skills and are used by tutors to find out what other skills students want to improve. Over the life of the project 2000 learners will have accessed learning and there are targets to raise men's engagement in family learning.

7. Development tutors are attached to each children's centre for one day each week and in areas where there was formally a Surestart presence, and 2. 5 days where the Children's Centre is a totally new concept. The tutors work with the local professionals to supporting their skill development and jointly run courses, with adults, and with adults and children together. The tutors work with adults to improve their own skills and their skills in supporting their children's learning. For many parents a Bookstart Storysacks Course is the first step in getting back into learning as working with parents to understand the children's curriculum can lead them to acknowledge and act upon their own skills gaps. The Bookstart coordinator contributes to these courses through input on speech and language development and story telling techniques, storytime sessions are included as part of these courses. The development tutors contribute to Bookstart objectives by being proactive in ensuring that Bookstart packs are gifted.

8. The development tutors directly deliver courses to parents and at present about 9% of attendees are men. Many of the parents who attend have had poor experiences of education and low levels of confidence. The following are some examples of courses:

• Short courses to attract men have been delivered in computer skills, digital photography, 'Dowsing for Dad's' (on Bodmin Moor) as well as activity days and beach days,
• A course designed to encourage the use of museums and art galleries was developed which used the parents as 'inspectors' of the facilities, the quality and interest of exhibits and the child appeal of the visits. Feedback was given to the setting and this proved a creative way of giving parents a practical focus in settings that they were not familiar in attending.
• A three week ( 2hrs a week) course, called Keeping up with the Children, provides a brief introduction to what children are expected to learn in the foundation and Key Stage 1 and 2. The mums and dads who attend find out what their children are doing at school or nursery and how they can be supported at home
• A six week Babytime ( 2hrs a week) course has been delivered in partnership with a health visitor which includes baby massage and using stories, rhymes and songs with babies,
• A six week course for parents and 3 year olds called 'Get Fit with Food'( 2hrs a week) focusing on preparing and eating healthy food ( such as soup and flapjacks), fitness activities and storytime based on a food theme,
• A 15 week course ( 2hrs a week) for up to ten parents and children, called Playing with Language and Fun with Numbers, looks at child development , language acquisition and the development of reading and number skill. The parents and children meet separately for an hour and then come together to take part in a joint activity,
• A 24 week course( 2hrs a week) on family literacy provides more in depth information and ideas about promoting learning at home but also allows parents the opportunity to explore their own style of parenting and how this may impact on their enjoyment of learning in the future. This course has been successful with parents who have a rigid approach to parenting and their children's learning and one such dad commented that it had taught him to listen to his children and explore new and better ways to motivate them.

9. These courses can act as a spring board to recruiting parents to Skills for Life courses leading to national qualifications, and for some to begin to attend formal education or training. The ability of the development tutors to work with individuals and small groups in their own communities and to respond to individuals learning styles has contributed to the success of attracting parents. These initiatives are addressing a cycle of low parental expectations and achievement for themselves and their children.

10. In addition to running these courses the FL tutors work in close partnership with other professional who are known to and trusted by the parents. Their visits with the toy library to remote and isolated villages and holiday camps that house the families of migrant workers provide opportunities to be introduced to and to engage with parents about the type of activities they would wish to become involved with. Many of the communities are isolated and closed and many parents do not access services due to location, preconceived ideas about what they offer and what they cost. Family Learning uses partnerships with local and trusted nursery teachers and health visitors to overcome these barriers and will create courses to respond to the expressed needs of the parents.

The Partnership with the Library Service

11. Susan McCullock, head of Young People's Library Services, explained that the partnership approach between libraries, Bookstart, FLY, Children's Centres and other early years services means there is a strategic corporate partnership in Cornwall which ensures that effective work with children and their families is not left to chance or personal relationships.

12. All libraries are involved in increasing the active participation of parents and most run:

• baby bounce and rhyme sessions either weekly or monthly depending on the size of the library.
• Story time sessions.
• Bookcrawl
• Summer reading challenge which this year aims to engage 6000 children, compared with the 1000 children who were involved three years ago.

13. The role of Bookstart in the partnership arrangements is highly valued and Bookstart has supported the development of engagement with children and families which the libraries would not have the resources to deliver through single agency. The partnership approach also ensures that key messages and information to parents are reinforced by all the services they come into contact with and this leads to staff taking work off each other and a reduction in duplication of activity.

14. Bookstart are actively engaged with all the libraries in the county in supporting the engagement of children and families. For example, Fowey and Par libraries have been support in running “write a story” competitions with parents using the BBC RAW campaign materials. Bookstart help with publicity, judging the entries and helping develop Family Learning opportunities to the parents who use the libraries. This one initiative has therefore had the benefit of engaging mums and dads with a literacy project, opened up learning opportunities in the wider family context and contributed to community engagement in the localities

15. Falmouth library invite groups from SureStart or other hard to reach groups into the library on a day that the library is not open to the public. The library staff have the time to welcome and engage with the parents with library services and this has been successful in encouraging parents to gain confidence in coming to the library and start borrowing books or joining groups and family learning activities on a regular basis.

16. Active library membership for the under 4s has gone up by 12% and whilst there are many successes there is also room for development. There is a need for a more strategic approach between libraries and children's centres in determining the process required to attract parents who are not regular library users and how this can best be support by the library taking their services to the children's centres and the children's centres taking parents to the library.

17. Some library staff are not comfortable in working with children and their families and staff training and development is needed in some cases to maximise the impact of the service on outcomes for children.

Summary

18. Cornwall County Council has a clear strategic approach to the coordination and provision of services to children and their families and Bookstart is embedded in this strategy.
19. The strategic vision is its translation into an effective operational partnerships which is proactive in offering universal and targeted services.
20. The integration of Bookstart with Family Learning leads the coordinator to state that she believes 'Family Learning is at the cutting edge of where education is going and needs to go'. Therefore Bookstart is not seen as an end in itself but as a catalyst to engage parents and children in family learning.
21. The success of Bookstart's integration into the strategic and operational partnerships is in part due to the value of the product but also to the commitment and enthusiasm of the coordinator and her team.
22. The attraction of ESF funding has provided extra resources to support this work but the team are confident that they have demonstrated to decision makers that the project has been successful in supporting the delivery of key objectives and supporting better outcomes for children. It is therefore anticipated that the work will remain sustainable when the funding ends in April 2008 although it is recognised that some efficiencies will have to be made.

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Visits to specific projects

Cornwall Family Information Service (FIS), St. Austell

The FIS is part of the Cornwall County Council Family Services Department. The service provides information on a wide range of information services for children and young people aged 0-20. They have considerable contact with dads through their free phone service.

The FIS are a key member of the early years partnership and work closely with Bookstart. They were prompted to begin prioritising the development of a service wide approach to working with fathers following attendance at a “Fathers Direct” conference which really challenged them to think about how proactive they were being in providing information and activities that are relevant and make men feel comfortable in accessing children's services.

FIS have six outreach workers who take sample Bookstart packs to all the group settings they visit to raise awareness of Bookstart. They focus on hard to reach families and work extensively with families where English is not the first language. This partnership extends the reach of Bookstart into a wide range of groups and supports Family Services aim of providing a seamless service to parents and children which depends on all professionals understanding and taking each others message into the groups and families they work with.

The FIS are in the process of arranging a county wide 5-a-side football tournament to engage dads. They have been offered the use of a football ground to host the event. A wide range of organisations have agreed to be involved:

• The Testicular Cancer campaign.
• The Healthy Families Campaign will provide healthy salads.
• Tesco's will provide the healthy food.
• A sunscreen manufacturer is providing suncare products and information about the health risks of over exposure to the sun.
• An ice cream manufacturer to provide ices.
• Bookstart will run story time and rhymetime.
• The coastguards will provide water, beach and sea safety information.
• Family Learning will provide football taster sessions.
• The Job Centre will provide information on employment and benefits and are providing the medals and trophies for winners. Job Centre plus have been involved with a scheme called “kick it” which has been sanctioned by Cornwall Football Association. This scheme has run courses for 10 men to undertake football coaching courses.
• St. Johns Ambulance.
• There will be a free crèche, a playbus and facepainting.

There will be up to 32 teams taking part and this will include teams from the Royal Navy, the Police, Young Offenders, Satur Dads, the Probation Service and dads teams from schools. There has been considerable interest in the event and ASDA has agreed to sponsor a team taking part. It is anticipated that up to 1000 dads, children and young people will take part.

The registration forms will enable the service to judge how far they have reached dads in the area and target future activity in areas of low take up. User feedback will be gathered to inform future activity.

The purpose of the event is to:

• Engage dads and children in an event that will be pleasurable and fun and contributes to the delivery of the ECM outcomes.
• Provide information packs and make direct contact with dads about a wide range of services and groups with a view to engaging them in more local activities.
• The tournament has also had an important role in maintaining partnership working through involvement in the organisation of the day and by entering teams for the tournament.

FIS are targeting the content and design of publicity directly at dads and throughout the day the information given will focus on the role and contribution dads make in their children's lives.

Redruth Children's Centre

Redruth Children's Centre is a busy and welcoming purpose built centre. A SaturDads group is held at the centre every fortnight from 9.30-12.00 on Saturdays. The events are specifically for dads and their children to spend time together and have acted as a stepping stone for dads to become more involved in a range of children's centre activities and whole family experiences.

The dads are involved in designing the sessions and there is a wide range of activities available such as crafts, board games, computers and playstations. There are also whole group activities such as parachute activities and mini volleyball.

The sessions are aimed at dads and children aged 1-10 and start with breakfast. The provision of food is considered important by the organisers as it “breaks the ice” and gets the attendees involved, mixing and socialising as soon as they arrive. The location of the centre is also important as it is easy to get there and plenty of parking spaces are available. Dads value the fact that it is a 'drop in' as they can come regularly or occasionally to fit in with other family commitments.

The group organiser is Ian Parsons who is based at Trevu Surestart centre, Cambourne, where he also runs a SaturDads group. Having a male staff member for dads to relate to is positive especially when new dads attend. Ian encourages the group to be self directing and they are planning summer trips including one to some local woods with the Park Rangers to build dens.

Children's Centre staff also attend the sessions and have seen real benefits for the dads and children from coming to SaturDads. The dads and children have fun and their bonding with the children has improved. The dads have progressively become more relaxed at the centre and more involved in planning and directing activities. One father who does not live with his children has contact with them on Saturdays and values the group as a relaxed and comfortable time to spend time with his children.

Interview with a member of SaturDads

Clive has attended every session of the group and really enjoys spending time with his children and with other dads and children at the group. The children can do things at the centre which they could not at home, such as sand and water play. He has developed new skills and ideas and now does lots of activities at home with his children that he never would have thought of doing previously. Initially he attended with his three year old son and one year old baby but now his 10 year old also comes along. There are interesting things for all of them to do and attending the group has improved his relationship with his children and taught him new ways of relating to them.

Clive values all the staff and is involved with other activities at the centre but he is glad that this group is led by a male. He does not understand why more local dads are not involved and may suggest that the group tries to attract more members through publicity and talking to other dads at school.

His key messages to people wanting to attract dads into their groups are:

• Listen to what men have to say and acknowledge their contribution to their children's lives.
• Ask what they want and listen to their ideas – don't assume all men like football.
• Don't make assumptions about dads that attend but talk to them and get to know them.
• Expect the same positive and negative dynamics you can get in all groups and help the group work through the negative dynamics.

Interview with Clive's partner

Clive and the two younger children started attending the sessions to give his partner and their 10 year old a chance to do things together that it is hard to do with two under 5s. However, Clive and the other children enjoyed the group so much that the 10 year old went along with them to see what it was like and enjoyed it so much she continues to go.

This has meant that for the first time in ten years Clive's partner gets a morning to herself every other Saturday. She really values this time, looks forward to it and plans what she will do. Attending the group has improved Clive's relationship with the children, has made their relationship more supportive because Clive is more involved in the childcare and has improved the children's relationship with their dad.

Clive's son said “I love the bacon butties and playing with

Bodmin Children's Centre

Bodmin Children's Centre is based in an area of high deprivation with 1 in 10 girls becoming pregnant in their teenage years. The centre employs an inclusion worker who tries hard to get dads involved through a range of activities. The following have been successful in engaging dads:

• A teatime dads and children group that included a free tea for everyone who attended. This group was successful in attracting a group of dads but when they changed the group slightly and stopped providing tea the dads stopped attending. Their experience with the dads they are trying to engage is that providing food can be a hook to getting men to attend and creates a relaxed and social aspect to the sessions.
• Family fun days, such as, bike rides, fun days on the Bodmin Beacon incorporating a session at the library.
• The centre are organising a group of dads to take part in the forthcoming FIS 5-a-side football tournament.

The most successful means of attracting dads is through direct word of mouth and through mothers who attend the Centre but posters and partners are also used to publicise activities which are best attended when held on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. The staff have found that men like to have a focus to the group, prefer to be engaged with activities and like an end product. They are not comfortable in groups where the focus is sitting down and talking and this communication is best achieved through the activities. They also respond best when they are included and involved in the decision making which gives them a sense of ownership of group ideas and activities.

The Centre is currently asking dads to enrol on a series of summer sessions called the Beacon Project. This will involve making a commitment to attending four sessions to include a bug hunt on Bodmin Beacon, arts and craft activities at the centre, digital photography on the Beacon which will be developed in the computer suite at the local school, and storytime and story sacks on the Beacon. This project will lead to further activities being designed in the autumn. Having male staff running sessions is helpful and there are plans for the male yoga teacher to set up ante natal classes for couples.

In addition to running specific activities for men the engagement worker is seeking opportunities to work with both parents. She is developing this approach as she has found that engaging both parents with the same message at and encouraging them to think together about how they will put new ideas into practice has been successful.

Bodmin Library Story Sacks

FLY tutors have piloted a story sack course for dads in Bodmin Library. The courses run for six weeks and the dads make a story sack specifically for their child. One session was observed at Bodmin library and a grandfather who attends was interviewed about his experiences.

Bob is a regular library user and found out about the course from library staff who were proactive in publicising the course and positively encouraging dads to attend. The library staff were a significant factor in his engagement with the course. His granddaughter stays with him and his wife during the week as the travel demands of her parent's jobs make arranging childcare difficult and this arrangement works well for everyone.

Bob is a keen reader and his granddaughter loves books and is now achieving well at school. Primarily, he reads with his granddaughter because they both enjoy it and it has been significant in developing a special bond between them. He is also aware from his experiences as a parent that reading supports children's education and contributes to making children feel secure and confident as part of routines, such as bedtime stories. In their situation books are also important in assisting the transition between time spent with her parents and her grandparents. Bob and his wife recently took their granddaughter on a trip to Barcelona and she was fascinated by the country and the fact that people spoke another language. As a result Bob has decided to make a story sack on a Spanish theme to address and develop this interest. He has chosen an Usbourne Children's Spanish-English picture dictionary, a Bookstart Spanish- English dual language book and he is devising a game based on the story to identify and learn the names of fruit in Spanish.

Bob has really enjoyed the course and making the story sack. He values the course leaders one of whom is male but does not necessarily think having male staff members is essential as the key skills of a tutor are in engaging men, in helping them develop their own ideas and in producing a special story sack for a child that will build their enjoyment together