Overview
Let’s Read is a national, evidence-based early literacy initiative that promotes reading with children from birth to five years.
Its vision is for all Australian children to share books, stories, songs and nursery rhymes every day from birth with the important people in their lives.
Let’s Read was developed in 2005 by the Centre for Community Child Health at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and The Royal Children’s Hospital.
The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and The Smith Family have partnered to implement Let’s Read with communities across Australia.
The Let’s Read community program
Let's Read works with communities to promote the importance of early literacy. The Let’s Read community program aims to address the additional literacy challenges faced by children growing up in low socio-economic households and communities.
The Let’s Read community program:
- trains professionals about the importance of early literacy and how to engage with families and caregivers to help them to support their children’s emergent literacy
- supports the Let’s Read universal multi-point intervention, which is provided by a trusted community professional multiple times between birth and five years of age
- makes high quality children’s books available at low cost for use in the home and community
- provides messages, information and resources that support provision of literacy rich home environments
- provides messages and resources to support community approaches to early literacy development and encourage literacy rich experiences in the community
- encourages and supports partnerships and initiatives for literacy activities and promotion.
Communities across Australia are using Let’s Read to support families and carers to read with their children from birth. Let’s Read has been delivered in more than 100 disadvantaged communities, with over 200,000 children participating in the program.