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• 15Apr2011

  Can literacy help us shape the future in Sheffield?

  Posted by Sonia Sharp

  Dr Sonia Sharp, Executive Director of Children’s Services, Sheffield City Council

  As with many local authorities, Sheffield is restructuring. We’re looking to make savings and review our services to ensure we are funding things which are making the most difference. Over the last two years we have developed a literacy strategy. We know literacy underpins life chances and low literacy is a factor in child poverty. By ensuring that literacy is embedded as a priority for the future, the council is securing the building blocks for individual success and community prosperity. 

  Our strategy does what it says on the tin, Every Sheffield Child Articulate and Literate by Eleven. Our aim is that every child has the literacy skills they need to succeed in life. Why shouldn’t we all aim for this goal? Our work has included coordinating literacy practice across Sheffield ensuring that our schools, early years and other service providers are adopting evidence-based practice. In particular we have focused on supporting literacy in the home, understanding the critical role of parents and carers. We’ve provided opportunities for frontline staff to come together to celebrate and share good practice. We’ll be making the most of Hello, the national year of speech, language and communication, to raise awareness amongst professionals and families. But this is about the long term, not just a year, which is why we have a strategy. 

  We’ve got a lead officer in place to work with partners, and as Director I can help facilitate this work, for example by raising it at the different board meetings I attend. We are tracking impact now, for example what difference will it make now that new foster parents get training and support in how to help children in their care to read and write? What difference will it make to the hundreds of children cared for by childminders now they have been brought into our Literacy Enthusiasts Network? What impact will we have on families when we start working with housing providers later this year? 

  In these tough times I am particularly proud that our strategy is helping us reduce inequalities by ensuring literacy is on the agenda of a wide range of professionals and community partners. We believe that this approach can help us to target our resources to the greatest need without funding more projects. This is a role local authorities could take in every area, helping to broker partnerships and bring people round the table. Even in these tough times it’s our responsibility as local leaders to help shape the future. 

  For more information about our work please see Sheffield’s slides presented at the National Literacy Trust’s Literacy: leaders in local government conference on 1 December 2010, available on the website, or contact catherine.ellison@sheffield.gov.uk or go to www.sheffield.gov.uk/escal 

  In Sheffield, our work has been supported by our partnership with the National Literacy Trust. For more information about how the National Literacy Trust can support your authority to develop a literacy strategy contact emily.mccoy@literacytrust.org.uk 

Tags: Communities and local areas, Policy

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