Supporting the Social Care workforce
We work with local authorities, social care leaders, practitioners and carers to embed shared reading as a powerful relational tool, supporting children’s wellbeing, attachment and sense of belonging.
Eddie child: When we read stories together, it makes me feel happy and loved. It’s being part of the family.
BookTrust voiceover: For children in adoption, foster or kinship care, reading a book together can be a deeply bonding and joyful experience.
Rosie adult: When you’re reading with nanna, you like to squish yourself into little spaces, don’t you?
Lola child: It makes me feel warmer and happy.
Rosie adult: Books bring us together. They create a quiet space where we can just sit and not have anything else going on. That gives Lola so much joy.
BookTrust voiceover: Books also help us explore emotions safely. For children who’ve experienced disruption and loss, sharing stories brings comfort and stability.
Eddie child: My favourite story is about a monkey who’s lost his mum. He’s in the jungle with lots of creatures that help him, and at the end, he finds her. It feels important to me.
BookTrust voiceover/text: When children see themselves or their emotional experiences reflected in a book, this makes them feel they belong and strengthens their sense of identity.
Rosie adult: What’s happening here?
Lola child: The chick’s happy because Mr and Mrs Swan are being kind to him. Chick wants to send a letter to his mummy – so she knows he’s safe and that they love each other.
BookTrust voiceover: Every child deserves the right to be a reader. BookTrust supports children, families and practitioners to make reading together a part of everyday life – bringing joyful moments of connection.
Debbie adult: I brought the book home for Dora. It was about heroes who don’t wear capes…
She just looked at me, and said…
Dora child: But I’ve already got a hero without a cape. Because you and Uncle Alan are my heroes.
BookTrust voiceover: Find out more about BookTrust’s work to bring the joy of shared reading to children in contact with the social care system– visit booktrust.org.uk
Learn more about how shared reading can be a relational practice in children’s social care
Our Stories that Connect Us animation is based on real conversations with children in adoption, foster or kinship care, and shows us how sharing books can be a powerful way for children to build bonds and strengthen their sense of belonging and identity.
Real-life stories from Our Stories that Connect Us
Read or listen for more from families who told their stories to help us create this powerful animation.
Rosie and Lola
When you feel that bond and see the enjoyment and the excitement a child gets from being read to, it just stays with you forever.
Rosie, Lola’s Nana
Luke and Eddie
That book reminds me of the first day I came here and describes my feelings of how I live here.
Eddie, talking about the book‘Monkey Puzzle’
Debbie, Francis and Dora
The right books just help her understand her previous life a little bit more. They open doorways for us to be able to talk to her about things that happened.
Debbie, Dora’s Auntie
This work has been made possible thanks to the support of the Mohn Westlake Foundation.
Bonding and attachment research
-
This briefing provides an overview of BookTrust’s own insights and wider research which demonstrates that reading is not just a literacy or learning activity, but a relational one.
Talk to us
Share your details so we can talk more about how you can embed shared reading in your local authority or organisation.
You can also contact us by email at [email protected]
Register for our webinar with Dr Lisa Cherry
-
Join our free webinar on Tuesday 21 April with Dr Lisa Cherry, aimed at practitioners supporting children in kinship care, foster care and adoptive families
Latest updates
-
This briefing provides insights into the role reading and sharing stories can play in kinship care families’ lives and the types of support they find most meaningful.
How we can support social care teams
Research shows that reading and sharing stories supports bonding, stability, identity, wellbeing, social and emotional growth and attainment. In many ways, reading can be seen as a protective factor against the adversity some children experience.
BookTrust can provide expert support to organisations working with children and families in contact with the social care system to explore how shared reading can be used to support children’s wellbeing, sense of belonging, and to benefit them into later life. BookTrust has been working in this space for over 20 years, and reaches 10,000 children in foster care each year through its Letterbox Club programme, with strong evidence of impact on children’s enjoyment of reading, wellbeing and sense of belonging. Through our partnership with Kinship and local authority teams, we have provided books, alongside information, advice and support to over 1,000 kinship care families.
We partner with organisations and practitioners who are working with families every day. Our programmes are easy to embed within the wider support offer to increase life-chances for children from vulnerable family backgrounds, and to bring joy, comfort and adventure to their lives.
-
At BookTrust, we provide support for kinship care families, which can be used by our local authority partners, including virtual schools, as part of their local kinship care offer.
Reading programmes to get started
Find out more about Story Explorers and Letterbox Club.
-
A book subscription service for ages 1–4 that embeds sharing stories at home to strengthen bonding and attachment for foster, kinship and adoptive families.
-
Join hundreds of schools and local authorities using Letterbox Club to bring the magic of reading and numeracy to pupil premium and vulnerable learners age 3–13