Our strategy
Our strategy – Reading for a brighter future – sets out our renewed five-year vision to help more children and families build a regular reading habit and experience all the benefits that shared reading brings.
Our strategy focusses on supporting children in families on low incomes and from vulnerable family backgrounds, with a strong emphasis on shared reading in the early years.
We aim to make reading part of everyday life for every child, because we know the profound, wide-ranging and life-changing impact it has – improving wellbeing, overcoming disadvantage, strengthening relationships and helping to develop creativity.
Reading for a brighter future: BookTrust’s strategy 2025 – 2030
For over 100 years, BookTrust has championed the simple, powerful idea that reading can change lives. Each year, we reach over 1.3 million children and families across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We work with over 6,000 partners to support parents, carers and other professionals to make reading a joyful part of everyday life, so as many children as possible can experience the benefits of reading.
From Bookstart to Bookbuzz, and delivering through libraries, family hubs, schools and many others, our programmes support children from low income households and vulnerable family backgrounds to experience moments of connection through sharing stories. We know there’s lots more to do, and over the next five years we’re building on everything we’ve learned so far. We’ll be deepening our impact, extending our reach, and creating a more sustainable future for our work. So we’re focusing on three big goals. Building strong foundations hrough reading for children in foster, kinship and adoptive care. Supporting families on low incomes to make shared reading part of daily life in the Early Years. And establishing reading as a regular habit for all children, but especially those who need extra support
We’ll continue working with trusted partners to reach families in ways that work for them. We’re also growing our income, because reading together helps children to build connections, open up their imagination and find their place in the world. We’re creating reading habits to last a lifetime
To support our mission, and find out more about our work, visit booktrust.org.uk
Over the next five years, we will build on what we’ve learned, using our insight and evidence to develop new programmes and approaches, supporting even more children and building a sustainable future that will help us to deliver on our ambition.
Our strategy is guided by three impact goals:
- Children from vulnerable family backgrounds build strong foundations for life through reading
- Reading together is embedded in the life of early years families with low incomes
- Reading is a regular part of everyday life for all children, especially those who need extra support
We are already making a big difference through our work
Through our programmes we reach over 1.3 million families annually.
Each year we support more than 11,000 children from vulnerable family backgrounds. 96% of the children receiving our Letterbox Club programme like or love it as it helps them feel proud and confident as readers. We are also partnering with Kinship UK to deliver training for kinship carers and are developing a new shared reading offer to help the most vulnerable children.
Annually we deliver books and reading resources to over 90% of families with new babies and our Bookstart programmes currently reach over 400,000 children a year with 72% of those children coming from low-income households in England and Wales.
These programmes are helping families enjoy reading together, establish reading routines and see first-hand the benefits of reading.
98% of the secondary schools who use our Bookbuzz programme would recommend it to others because it supports them encouraging reading for pleasure in their school.
Alongside this – every year we deliver Big Welsh Rhyme Time and Pori Drwy Stori programmes in Wales, dual language books in over 35 languages, hundreds of reviews of the very best new children’s books and our BookTrust Represents programme supports and promotes authors and illustrators of colour.
In 2024- 25, we reached over 330,000 school-aged children with our programmes and digital content.
And we are guided by evidence in everything we do. Our Reading together, changing children’s lives publication distils a wealth of knowledge, research and real-world insights into a set of actionable recommendations about how we can make reading for pleasure with young children a part of everyday life.
Our next chapter
Now we want to do more – deepening our impact, using our evidence to develop new programmes and approaches and continuing to work with our network of partners to reach those who can benefit most.
We will continue to pilot new approaches and programmes and share our research and insights even more widely.
Reading can change lives, but we can’t achieve this impact for children and families alone. Get in touch to talk about how we can work together.
Get involved
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Help us make a difference to children throughout the UK. We can all do a bit more when we’re supported by our Friends.
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Understanding the impact of our interventions is central to BookTrust’s work. Find out more about the impact of our programmes and activities.
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Learn more about our range of projects and campaigns, designed to help people of all ages and backgrounds enjoy reading and writing.
Reading Together
Reading Together, Changing Children’s Lives is based on decades of experience of working with millions of families and thousands of local partners, including health visitors, nurseries, schools, libraries and food banks.
Discover our four proposals