As we reach the end of National Storytelling Week, we thought we would highlight two of the events and activities our not-for-profit foster care organisation has undertaken to promote reading and literacy for our foster carers and foster children.
Towards the end of last year, Doncaster author and illustrator Phil Sheppard came to one of our young people events. As well as being a fantastic children’s author and illustrator, Phil is also the Doncaster Hub Manager for the National Literacy Hub. Phil kindly hosted a ‘Draw with Phil’ session with the foster children and they were able to follow his step by step guidance to recreate some of his illustrations. He finished the day by kindly signing books that we purchased for our children to take home with them. The event was a great success for the young people and the foster carers.
We have also teamed up with National Literacy Trust. Our Social Work Assistants, who work directly with the young people in foster care with us, are all completing training to become Literacy Champions for the Trust, in order to support and encourage our young people with their reading skills. In return, the Trust have generously donated books for all our young people across all our regions and these will be distributed to them shortly.
We have recently taken additional office space in our Doncaster office and that room has been set up as a multiple purpose Participation Room, similar to our rooms in our Hereford, Cotswold and East Tilbury offices. We have used some of the space there to create a literacy corner, and in half term we’ll be holding an event where foster carers and children can see the new room and choose a book donated by National Literacy Trust for our children to keep.
It was children’s author J. K. Rowling who said “If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book” and Taylor Swift stated “Books train your mind and imagination to think big”. At Young People at Heart, we are doing everything we can to promote reading and literacy for our young people.
