8. Conclusions

Public libraries engagement with the early years agenda is wide spread and varied: 34% of library authorities responding to the questionnaire now have a recognisable early years specialist; 91% of the Sure Start projects within responding authorities include the library service as partners. Libraries work with early years does not follow one particular template and even within an authority different models are being used in different areas. This reflects the bottom up nature of the early years agenda and suggests that libraries are able to address community and neighbourhood strategies which subsist within the wider library authority. Libraries appreciate that Sure Start has offered them a unique opportunity to effectively target some of the hardest to reach families within the community through solid partnership projects.

However challenges remain: Despite the widespread successful library involvement with EYCDPs, 46% of library authorities responding to the questionnaire were not members. Recent government initiatives indicate that the Partnerships will have increasing strategic importance in the delivery of children’s services. Libraries membership of EYCDPs will therefore be a significant factor in maintaining libraries’ new found significance within early years services. Many libraries who are working well within their EYCDPs have found that their skills as information managers have been as attractive to the partnerships as their roles as early years literacy experts.

The expansion of libraries’ early years activity is supported almost entirely by non core library funding. In common with public libraries development of study support services, a wide variety of community partnership funding opportunities are being harnessed to support this work. However the relatively low level of core library funding for early years activity suggests that advocacy is required to support the mainstreaming of early years work within English public library services.

Bookstart is a key element within libraries’ early years activity. Many authorities feel that its sound research base vindicates their work with the very young. It has created partnerships, which initiatives such as Sure Start have built on. It has positioned libraries as key agents of early years literacy and pre-literacy support. Bookstart is also being used as a strategy to achieve the targets of these zoned initiatives.

Social inclusion is seen as one of the most valuable facets of Bookstart. It is a key early years literacy strategy in counties which do not have any areas receiving the intensive support which Sure Start delivers. It is an important strategy for libraries aiming to address children in situations of deprivation who live outside the zoned areas of support. There is a strong concern that Bookstart shouldn’t get trapped in zones. National coverage has ensured that all children have benefited from Bookstart in an approach which mirrors the fundamental inclusivity of libraries: as every child has been entitled to a library card, so every child has been entitled to book ownership through Bookstart.  The challenge will be to maintain this characteristic if national funding for the programme is not forthcoming, before the anticipated support from NOF in 2004.