This article is from the December 2002 issue of Update.
When CILIP Council adopted a new report on library services to children in October it was doing something radical. In formulating and endorsing Start with the Child, CILIP is taking on a role of strategic leadership. It is positioning itself as a policy leader in a strong partnership, driving the development and activity of the library and information sector. It is significant that this is happening in an area where libraries have led the way in developing public sector policy, supporting early development and literacy and addressing child poverty. It is also a tribute to the strength of CILIP members’ work for young people and the activity of the Youth and School Libraries Groups.
Start with the Child is an exciting overview of library services to children and young people and is a challenge for the future. It calls for increased investment and partnership working with young people themselves in libraries, so that libraries can meet their needs more effectively. It is the report of a working group of experts, whose thinking has been developed by access to new research. It will form the basis of advocacy and service development aimed at radically improving library services to children and young people.
Updating a vision
Since 1995, library services for children have developed with the help of the direction contained in the Library and Information Services Commission’s report Investing in Children. Many of the key ideas in the rapid improvement of the past few years emerged in Investing — Bookstart, homework clubs and study support and summer reading activities. However, the developments encouraged by the report and major policy changes have moved libraries beyond this vision. In autumn 2001 the Library Association’s Youth Libraries Committee decided there was an urgent need to refocus libraries’ work.
A working party was assembled to take this forward, including representatives of Ofsted, Resource, DCMS, DfES, the Arts Council, the National Literacy Trust and a range of experienced professionals backed by the Association of Senior Children’s and Education Librarians. They were invited to consider the four basic questions examined by Investing in Children:
- What are the needs of young people?
- How are libraries currently meeting these needs?
- What is the relationship between libraries, reading and literacy?
- How can libraries meet the needs of children and young people more effectively in the future?
As soon as the working party began to examine the first of these issues they realised that the task was more fundamental than had been anticipated and required a radical approach.
A new research base
One of the main themes of Investing in Children was the need for more discussion with young people about what they thought of libraries. One of the most tangible outcomes of the report was the creation of the Children’s Public Libraries Users’ Survey. Best Value has also helped focus libraries on the need to consult. But when the new working party began to analyse this evidence to answer the first of their four questions it became obvious that data was frequently gathered from a service planning perspective and didn’t engage with the fundamental motivations, attitudes and needs of young people. Start with the Child would have to help libraries get closer to children.
Resource agreed to fund a major piece of research to help. The research 1was commissioned by a consultancy which agreed to use experts from a variety of backgrounds — including childcare consultants and child psychologists — whose input the report needed if it was going to deepen libraries’ awareness of their role in young people’s lives.
The research combined a survey of already known data and theories about child development with commercial profiles of children’s markets and primary research, which introduces the voice of children into the report. It presents models which profile a child’s world at five different stages in their life. The research also describes the cultural and socio-demographic world of the child. This formed the overview needed to create a new vision of how libraries can work with children. With this research as a basis, Start with the Child grew into a radical call for libraries to work in partnership with young people to meet their needs. The research highlighted themes — some which had been anticipated, some which were startling and new — which provided the building blocks for the report.
Four critical factors
At the core of Start with the Child is the vision of how libraries can meet the needs of young people identified by the research. There are four critical factors. Start with the Child challenges all libraries that work with young people to place these at the very heart of their activities, ethos and planning.
- Libraries must offer attractive, appropriate environments and services to young people.
- Library services must be accessible and immediately relevant to children and must respond to their needs by involving them in planning and delivering services.
- Children and those who care for them must be helped in libraries by staff with relevant skills, and the diversity of their needs and cultures must be acknowledged and addressed.
- Libraries must be at the heart of a network of partnerships — supporting learning wherever it happens and reaching out to individuals and groups who may be excluded.
While sounding relatively uncontentious, these factors challenge libraries in a number of fundamental ways, which the report goes on to examine.
Where do young people’s cultures belong in libraries?
If libraries are to be relevant then young people must immediately recognise that they have a place there. The environment, the collection and even the staff must acknowledge and identify with them. Clearly this doesn’t mean that librarians should attempt toe-curlingly awful impressions of Ali G to win over teenagers. But it does mean taking forward initiatives such as the public library partnerships with Games Workshops, which have been attracting new teenage users into libraries. As part of the Their Reading Futures project, the Reading Agency has been creating new training materials and themes for child-ren’s library staff. These establish that a basic awareness of young people’s cultures is a fundamental element of providing good customer care for children.
The research graphically described the sophistication of young people’s use of ICT and the vital place it occupies in their lives. While libraries may regard ICT as an attraction to encourage young people’s use, it was salutary to discover that such was their acceptance of technology that they couldn’t conceive of environments without it. Start with the Child has identified the creative use of ICT, and the extent to which libraries use it to deliver services, as benchmarks of libraries’ effectiveness and responsivity to young people’s needs.
How well do we motivate children?
‘When you’re in Year 2 it isn’t fun coz you have to do tests and I don’t want to be in Year 2.’ This is one of the most moving quotes in the research: it is from a seven year-old girl who was feeling pressured by the need to do well at school.
When children are so frequently given the impression that learning is a high-pressure activity, demonstrated by exam success, libraries must seize the opportunity to show how learning is about the quality of life — and fundamentally relates to allowing individuals to realise their potential. This is one of the key themes of the report. It talks expansively about the ‘pleasure principle’ which motivates learning.
Start with the Child quotes evidence that the National Literacy Strategy has raised literacy levels among children, but, at the same time, they are less likely to be enthusiastic readers than they were six years ago.2 The report recognises the great contribution that school and public library reader development work with children can make in impressing young people, with their boosted literacy, that reading is enjoyable.
The research demonstrates how children from seven upwards are asserting their individual interests. If libraries engage with these interests they will stimulate the desire to learn. This is when libraries must intervene: children who learn for pleasure will become motivated learners for life.
When is a project not a project?
Central to the development of library services in the past few years have been the large number of projects which have emerged to address particular needs. These lie at the heart of the network of partnerships which libraries must develop and for which the report sets out a vision. Sure Start, study support programmes, reader development activities and social inclusion projects are examples of these fixed-term, partnership-based activities: some projects have transformed the way in which libraries work, others have been forgotten.
Libraries have to develop strategies to utilise the full potential of project work to transform their core service provision so that the legacy of the project lasts beyond the final instalment of funding. This is the key to sustainability. To do this libraries need to spread the skills learnt during the project from the project workers to all staff, and embed these lessons in mainstream provision. They should also share what they have learnt with other libraries — particularly those who are not eligible for similar funding because they are not located in ‘needy’ areas.
The report highlights certain activities which should be available to all children and young people through public libraries. These activities should be seen not as projects but as core services, delivered locally but funded nationally:
- Bookstart, managed by Booktrust and administered by libraries, which presents books and library information to babies through partnerships with health workers;
- the Reading Agency’s Summer Reading Challenge, which 500,000 children participate in, in 85 per cent of UK libraries;
- study support and homework clubs, offered by 60 per cent of public library authorities.
The value of these activities is proved by research and they should form part of a national library entitlement for all children.
Do we deal with children as individuals?
One of the research’s key conclusions is that ‘the segmentation of "youth" as a discrete group can be seen as a construct developed by adults rather than as an actuality’. Start with the Child has reflected this by focusing on the diversity of young people’s needs, particularly children with special education needs. Public and school libraries have had a very patchy record in meeting these children’s needs. We know that they borrow fewer books than their peers and welcome more support in choosing resources.3 We must develop an awareness of how we can help them, through research and training for library staff.
The most powerful strategy for incorporating the diversity of young people’s needs is working in partnership with them. The report recognises how many projects have been built on consultation, but it calls for this way of working to be mainstreamed and adopted in a more radical way: children and young people must be involved in designing and delivering their services. They need to have an ongoing role in stock selection. They need to know that libraries are really a place for the child.
Shaping the future
If Start with the Child is to be a success, it has to be more than a report — it needs to be a movement. This movement must assert the importance of library services to children to external agencies and encourage school libraries, school library services, public and FE libraries to find new ways to meet young people’s needs.
CILIP is moving this forward in a number of ways:
- Start with the Child is at the centre of advocacy activity launched at the Public Library Authorities Conference in October;
- the home nations are being invited to look at the implications for them and set up working parties for the formation of specific recommendations aimed at agencies in each nation (the initial set of recommendations has an English focus);
- there will be a series of briefings for the English agencies to which recommendations are addressed, which will introduce them to the report and their role in realising its vision;
- supporting documents and a Powerpoint presentation have been published with the report to encourage libraries to use the report to develop their services and advocacy (www.cilip.org.uk/startwiththechild).
We now have a vision for the Institute and for the profession of the kind of library service to which every child in the country is entitled. Start with the Child argues that libraries can change children’s lives — firing their imaginations, giving them space to learn and empowering them with information — improving their quality of life today and enabling them to unlock the potential of their future. It is now up to us all to make it happen.
References
1 Morris Hargreaves McIntyre. Start with the Child: the needs and motivations of children and young people. A report commissioned by Resource and CILIP, 2002 (www.resource.gov.uk).
2 NCRCL. Pilot Reading Survey 2000/01. University of Surrey Roehampton.
3 Hancock, Kendrick and Reynolds. Young People’s Reading at the End of the Century: focus on pupils with special educational needs. University of Surrey Roehampton, 1999.
Jonathan Douglas is Professional Adviser, Youth and School Libraries at CILIP.
Start with the Child is available at www.cilip.org.uk/advocacy/startwiththechild/ where there is also a feedback form.