October 2002

Robert Jones tells the story of a child who didn't know the names of the animals.

Jones, deputy director of CHIP of Greater Richmond, says a CHIP home-visitor nurse brought a picture book to a home to show to a young boy in a client family. The boy was very excited, and his mom explained that the boy already had a copy of the book, and he loved it. The nurse sat down with the boy and his book, but when she asked him about the animals in the picture, he couldn't name them - the horse, the cow, or the others. His mom knew that having books was good for her child, but didn't know that talking to him about the images and ideas was important. When the nurse went back to visit the family a few weeks later, the boy proudly pulled out the book and showed the nurse that he could identify the animals by picture and by name.

"It was a small but critical piece missing in the way the parent helped the child learn," says Jones. "But thanks to the home-visitor nurse, it is now there."

This is one example of the importance of Youth Matters' strategy to incorporate family literacy into home visitor programs to ensure that parents are able to be their children's first teachers. This "Home Advantage" strategy is a component of Youth Matters' 3R - Richmond Region Reads - Campaign.

"The home visitor model has the objective of helping children learn to read and looks at the entire picture," says Lisa Specter, Youth Matters' deputy director. "This includes family health, family resources and family literacy. Research shows that these areas impact the ability of parents to teach their children the skills necessary for success."

Recently, 26 home visitors from CHIP (Comprehensive Health Investment Project) of Greater Richmond and Healthy Families programs in Richmond, Chesterfield and Henrico received training, arranged by Youth Matters, to incorporate family literacy into their home visits. The Virginia Literacy Foundation, Richmond Public Library and the VCU Adult Learning Resource Center co-sponsored the event.

Much of what home visitors already do to support parents as the providers, caregivers and nurturers of their children helps get kids ready to learn because it improves their social and emotional development. A new report from the Kauffman Foundation adds to this expanding area of research: "The typical concept of readiness for kindergarten has usually been thought of in terms of cognitive learning, such as numbers, colors and the alphabet. Social-emotional development and academic achievement are not separate priorities, rather they must be understood as representing the continuum of development that is needed for children to grow up healthy and succeed in school."

Helping parents be their children's first teachers is a natural extension of the traditional home visitor services. "The training helped the home visitors incorporate literacy holistically," says Jones. "We don't want to 'do literacy' and we would not want it to seem an unnatural add-on. We're just tweaking our services to get to literacy goals as well."

Home visitors talk to parents about reading and in a wide variety of ways help parents understand how important reading is. "Some parents can't read themselves," says Jones. "But they can tell stories, talk about pictures and get kids excited about books, images and ideas." Home visitors also provide free books for children to keep from the 3R Campaign's book bank.

"Youth Matters helped the home visitor community understand the potential for including family literacy in our services," says Jones. "They helped us see the reading connection, and made it possible for us to incorporate it into our services."

For more information on this website about Youth Matters, click here. For more information on this website about early childhood interventions, click here.