We at Home-Start Reading, are most grateful to the BG Group plc for choosing us as one of their 2013 Flagship charities.  They will be supporting our “Talking Families” project with a grant of £20,000 a year for two years.

Research shows that a child’s early language skills correlate strongly with their life chances.  The aims of our project are:

• in families with children under 5, to support more effective parent/child communication in the home, with the benefits of stimulating a closer, happier, more relaxed parent/child relationship.
• to stimulate language and communication so that the child is made more ready for transition to nursery or primary school, both in socialisation and in readiness to learn, and boost their chances of a strong start in education.

Over the two years, we will be giving additional training to our volunteers, and developing materials and resources, so that they can help some of our parents to help their children, from babyhood onwards, to speak and communicate effectively by the time they start school.