Bookstart Around the World 1
Bookstart Around the World Financing is often a m
ixture of public funding and private partnerships or donations. The national organisations support local programmes in various ways and carry out and coordinate evaluations. For example, several have developed local project evaluation templates and collect national data for evaluations. It is also important to emphasise that the various countries’ administrations are organised in different ways, which means that care should be taken when making direct comparisons between libraries, preschools and child healthcare services, since these organisations differ in many ways between countries. Some similarities and differences between the various bookgifting programmes are described below; however it is beyond the scope of this overview to make a more detailed comparison and analysis due to countryspecific differences. 3.8.1 Bookgifting programme models From these illustrative examples, it is possible to distinguish some common setups and models for bookgifting programmes. The biggest differences appear to comprise the entity that actually gives the books away. A common method is to have paediatricians or other child healthcare workers distribute the books during the children’s routine medical checkups or vaccinations (Reach Out and Read, and Lesestart 123). Reach Out and Read is the only programme that exclusively involves the child healthcare services in its programme. The German Lesestart 123 programme first includes paediatricians, followed by libraries. The model used in the Netherlands is almost the opposite; books are given to families at the library, which is the core of the programme, and child healthcare services and preschools are involved according to local circumstances. The most common way, however, appears to be to involve several different organisations and to have a model that is based on collaboration between several parties and activities aimed at young children. The reasons seem to be that, in many places, local circumstances must dictate how local activities can be organised. In the United Kingdom and Japan, it is most common for books to be given out at child healthcare services, but libraries and preschools are often also involved. The same is true of the childhealthcarecentric programme in Germany, where the third gift is collected from the library. In the Netherlands, too, where libraries are central, preschools and child healthcare services are also involved. Another common model is for Bookstart practitioners to visit families at home. This has been the core of the Bookstart programmes in Denmark and Sweden. The Danish model is based on librarians (primarily) making home visits to give books as gifts and provide advice to families with children in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas (Espersen, 2016; the Swedish Arts Council, 2018). Despite promising results from the evaluation (Espersen, 2016), Bogstart in Denmark is no longer active, since the programme was not granted financial support after 2016. In the United Kingdom, home visits are also made, but these are done in connection with medical checkups from child healthcare services (Eliot, 2014), and as part of Bookstart Corner (Rix et al., 2015). In addition to the examples highlighted in this report, there are other models used for bookgifting programmes. In Nova Scotia, Canada and Poland, books and information are given to families right at the hospital when a child is born (EU Read, 2019d; EU Read, 2019e). The most obvious challenges seem to be reaching the children that are in greatest need of these interventions. One advantage of using child healthcare services as practitioners seems to be that there is a continuity and that these can reach out to the vast majority of children, as can be seen in Germany and the United States. Reaching out to families that have the greatest need is precisely the challenge being faced in the Netherlands, where libraries are the principal practitioner. In that country, it is collaboration with the other organisations that becomes key. As we will see later in this overview, the question of who gives the books away is not so simple to answer, and it appears to depend greatly on countryspecific and local circumstances. 21/52