The Vital Link
Do you work with adults who want to improve their reading and writing skills? The Vital Link is our national programme which aims to reach out to adult literacy learners and emergent readers (that's the technical term for those who can read but have yet to build their reading stamina and experience).
We're doing this by encouraging libraries and adult literacy practitioners (another technical term) to work together to create a brilliant offer to new readers - a welcoming space with friendly staff, support to learn, the right books and lots of creative ways of promoting them.
We know that this can motivate adults to improve their reading skills so that they can read more - and enjoy it.
So our The Vital Link website includes lots of support for librarians and adult literacy professionals who want to work together. This includes toolkits, case studies of successful collaborations, training information and a unique database of books suitable for adults who aren't confident readers - First Choice Books.
We also run many of our projects for adults with lower literacy levels (BBC RaW, Six Book Challenge and Quick Reads) under the umbrella of The Vital Link.
As ever, we can't do all of this on our own so we are running The Vital Link in partnership with the National Literacy Trust. The Vital Link has been endorsed by the Society of Chief Librarians and is part of the government's ten-year vision for public libraries, Framework for the Future. We are also partly funded by the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills to get their reading for pleasure message out to those that work with adults who aren't confident readers.