Bookstart Around the World 1
Bookstart Around the World connection with routin
e medical checkups for children. The model involves three interventions: proactive guidance for parents, book giveaways, and waiting rooms that promote reading (Needlman et al., 2019). Apart from paediatricians, other staff at the clinics are also involved, and in some cases, there are volunteers who read with families in the waiting rooms. By means of this model, families receive about 10 books by the time the child has reached five years of age, although there are local variations, and the amount differs depending on the extent to which parents attend all of the visits. The programme is aimed at all families with children at locations where Reach Out and Read is active. There are targeted initiatives for certain groups that have different circumstances, such as children with disabilities, minority groups such as indigenous populations, Spanishspeakers and multilingual families, and there is a programme for the children of parents who serve in the military. Another programme that was recently started aims to encourage simple counting exercises when families read out loud (Reach Out and Read, 2020c). The targetgrouporiented initiatives do not involve any organisational changes – the book giveaways and discussions continue to take place during medical checkups. Instead, it is the content of the discussions and books that are adapted for each family, which is actually always the aspiration. The targeted initiatives and associated materials thus constitute an additional help for doctors in their meetings with families (Interview 2). However, other changes are made in certain areas, such as ensuring that care staff speak certain languages, or organising libraries with children’s books at clinics (Diener et al., 2012; Byington et al., 2008). Since approximately 91 percent of all children in the United States up to the age of five visit child healthcare services at least once per year, a large proportion of families can be reached in this manner. This also means that Reach Out and Read only extends to families that attend medical checkups, which is also the reason why special targeted initiatives have been developed. 3.4.2 Research and evaluation When Reach Out and Read first began to grow and more and more clinics started to introduce the concept, a need was identified for studying the effects of such programmes. Since Reach Out and Read is a programme based in clinics, there are close connections with research institutes, so evaluations and studies of the programme consist mainly of research publications. About 18 academic studies have been published throughout the programme’s 30 years. The research focuses mainly on the effects that can be observed in family habits with regards to literacy activities and child language development; but in more recent years, other potential effects the programme may have, and the families’ relationship to child healthcare services in general, have also been examined more closely. The results can be described as consistently positive in that links have been demonstrated between interventions from Reach Out and Read and family habits with regards to literacy activities and language development in children. The results from a selection of these studies are presented in later sections. 3.5 The Netherlands BoekStart is a national bookgifting programme in the Netherlands aimed at families with children up to the age of four. BoekStart is part of a wider national readingpromotion programme that also includes an initiative at school libraries aimed at older children. The programme is organised nationally by the Dutch Reading Foundation and the national library (the Dutch Reading Foundation, 2020). BoekStart is further coordinated at the reading level by the regional library organisation. The local libraries run BoekStart in collaboration with other local interested parties in the municipalities (Bos, 2019). Newly started initiatives may receive initial funding, but local initiatives need to be funded as part of the regular budgets in the long term. The national and regional levels also provide tool kits for each organisation. Since its inception in 2008, BoekStart has grown in scope and, today, 98 percent of libraries participate (EU Read, 2019a). 15/52