Creating a literacy culture
Janet Hunter, director, Newcastle Literacy Trust

This was the main finding of a recent independent report, funded by the Baring Foundation, which assessed the work and achievements of the Newcastle Literacy Trust in its first three years, identified strengths and weaknesses and suggested areas for possible development. The evaluation took place only weeks before I took over from founding director Maggi Hunt.
It was also encouraging to read that "Newcastle Literacy Trust has made good literacy work into a healthy virus that is slowly infecting thinking, policy, development plans and practice ...Literacy is increasingly seen as an activity associated with success, rather than failure. "

The report was full of positive comments, and these were extremely gratifying. Even more helpful to a new director, however, were the issues identified for action in the future. One of these was the suggestion that we should" continue to extend and develop work with organisations that can link effectively with 'hard-to-reach' young people and families". We already employ a literacy development worker who has had a real impact on the literacy skills of a small group of young people in a deprived area of the city, and we are now making plans to develop a coherent, strategic network of similar projects. across the city.

Our ability to work with hard-to-reach families has been enhanced by a unique new partnership with Reading Is Fundamental. RIF, UK employs, and we jointly manage, a family literacy worker who is developing a 10-week programme of sessions to involve parents of very young children in activities to enhance their babies' language and pre-literacy development. Her work will now be incorporated into a new Sure Start programme in the east of the city, and we are discussing ways to extend and develop this successful new initiative.

The evaluation has also been useful in helping our trustees and other partners to identify ways in which they support us. We were recommended to "establish clearly, and market, the range of support and services" we provide, and to this end we have set up a small working group of partners who are helping us to identify future directions and strategies.

We were also advised to "explore further the potential of the trustees and council members in strategically expanding and strengthening the influence of the Trust". Since then, some of our trustees have formed a marketing task group whose aim is to raise the Trust's profile, especially among those powerful sectors of the community who may in future be able either to support us directly or influence other potential supporters in our favour. We are still looking carefully at some of the other issues raised and the suggestions made in the report.

I am also aware that embarking on an evaluation can be a demanding, time-consuming and occasionally painful process. I do believe, however, that any organisation with a genuine desire to assess its progress will find it to be an overwhelmingly constructive and positive experience.

The evaluation process
The choice of consultants posed some interesting questions. In spite of a project brief which emphasised the Trust's role in supporting the raising of literacy standards in non-educational environments across the community, many of those who were asked to tender proved unable to look beyond key stages and classroom practice.

The Hull-based organisation Community Performance was awarded the contract and pulled together a team of three consultants with impressive experience in formal and informal education as well as community development. They identified a number of impact indicators on which to base their investigation:

* projects or activities that did not exist before the Trust's involvement
* numbers of learners taking part in literacy activities
* evidence of changed attitudes towards literacy in organisations
* impact on the policies and practice of other organisations
* press coverage of literacy activities to raise public awareness
* leverage of additional funding into Newcastle

The evaluation report was produced after a crowded week in which Community Performance made numerous visits to partner projects, interviewed Trust staff, trustees and working partners and read a substantial pile of letters from colleagues across the city. The final report was presented to our trustees, staff and partners at the beginning of February.

A summary of the evaluation report is available on the National Literacy Trust website www.literacytrust.org.uk/Database/Newcastlesumm.html

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