Thousands of parents each year receive the free Bookstart Baby pack, which includes a free bilingual book and advice, via their health visitor, and parents told the BBC it helps build bonds with their children.<\/p>\n
The Bookstart programme is run by BookTrust across the UK, and in Wales it includes two free packs – one usually at the six-month health check and the other at the 27-month check. Its sister charity Scottish Book Trust supports families in Scotland.<\/p>\n
Jones said their work supporting families with reading was about more than just the free books, with extra targeted elements to the programmes at a cost of \u00a3370,000 a year.<\/p>\n
“We’ve been doing it for a long time,” Jones said.<\/p>\n
“You have to build the skills, the practitioners, they have to understand the programmes they’re delivering.<\/p>\n
“We do lots of research in BookTrust in terms of the evaluation of our programmes and the impact they make and we know they make a difference, not only in getting families reading but helping families with their Welsh as well.”<\/p>\n
Grant funding for the programme from Adnodd stops at the end of March 2026 while it decides how to commission literacy materials for young children in future.<\/p>\n
It said it was working with BookTrust and others “to ensure there is no gap in the provision of early years literacy materials to families” and “rather than replicating a specific delivery model, it focused on identifying the most effective approaches to improving literacy outcomes for young learners in Wales”.<\/p>\n
“This work will be informed by evidence and research to ensure the strongest possible outcomes,” Adnodd added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of parents each year receive the free Bookstart Baby pack, which includes a free bilingual book and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5010],"tags":[748,4884,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-698940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wales","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115902417991103866","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}