This was Professor John Bynner's message to public sector managers a seminar to raise awareness of basic skills issues. It was a newspaper headline in 1997 that first drew my attention to the work of Professor John Bynner and Samantha Parsons. Their longitudinal research on people born in 1958 (It doesn't get any better, BSA 1997) showed a possible link between low bask skills and poorer health; if women had low basic skills they were five times more likely to be depressed; they ate less fruit and vegetables; took less exercise and were more likely to continue smoking if pregnant. Men showed a similar pattern.

The following year the Basic Skills Agency produced a report on the size of the basic skills problem in Harlow. In a population of 74,000, over 8,000 people had basic skills difficulties. It seemed timely to develop a project to help tackle the skills deficit in Harlow alongside contributing to the health improvement programme. I worked with Chris Kirk, essential skills coordinator, at North and West Essex Adult Community College with the aim of demonstrating that partnership working was the key to solving a multi-dimensional problem. We decided to take a two-pronged approach. Firstly we had to raise awareness of the issues with all front line staff - those who are in daily contact with the public - and then follow this up by working directly with those with basic skills needs. A key factor in the success of training front line staff was ensuring managers' awareness of the issues so that they would willingly release staff for training.

We achieved this through a seminar attended by 70 managers, underlining the relevance of basic skills to every agency. Speakers emphasised that because of poor basic skills, many clients would not have equal access to public services - and that had an impact on how the quality of these services was judged.

Front line training
Having obtained the support and enthusiasm of managers, training courses were set up to raise staff's awareness of the needs of people with low basic skills. The courses were designed to show how they could support someone with a basic skills need and provide information on the learning opportunities available in Harlow. The training was practical and experiential and involved exercises that would help participants look behind the immediate problem to its root causes. It covered the size of the problem, locally and nationally, and the reasons for people having poor skills. We looked at how often we use basic skills in our everyday lives - using recipes, instructions, using the phone, road signs, directions and helping with children's homework - and helped participants to experience some of the frustrations low basic skills imposed on people's lives through a practical exercise that required them to make sense of unknown signs and symbols. We also looked at how poor skills had an impact on health. Finally, we looked at the leaflets and literature available in public services to see whether they met the needs of people with low basic skills.

Following the success of this project and with further funding from the Department of Health we ran four more courses looking at the language and design of leaflets and public information to help staff improve a leaflet or letter used by their agency.

Outreach
We also set up a peer advisory group made up of past and present ask skills students from the college and other adults we had met in the course of outreach work. The purpose of the group is to inform agencies and learning providers how those with low basic skills would like them to respond to their needs. We make a small payment to those in the group to recognise the time and costs involved and to show how their input is valued. With further funding we have been taking health and basic skills courses out in to the community. We hoped that by building basic skills elements into courses on health issues we might encourage more people to come along, who might otherwise be put off by a basic skills agenda. But, this proved more difficult than we expected, mainly because we are trying to reach people who would not necessarily see that they have a need to develop their bask skills. We are continuing our work with agencies such as the housing association, older people's services, health visitors and midwives and though this ongoing work has been a bit of a roller coaster ride at times, we believe that with the support of varied agencies we will break down the barriers and improve the health and basic skills of people in Harlow.

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