Bookstart working with the Traveller Community
A best practice guide for professionals
Introduction
Booktrust aims to bring children and books together from as early an age as possible and
through Bookstart reaches out to all children in our society. As part of this aim it is important
that families who may not access Bookstart through the traditional methods are reached so
that they too can receive the message about the importance of reading with young children.
The Traveller community is one such group who may not, for various reasons, receive a
Bookstart pack. This guidance has been put together to maximise on the good work already
being undertaken in many authorities within the UK. Traveller children have been identified
as being particularly vulnerable on entering formal education settings and Bookstart is an
excellent way to introduce the concept of the fun and joy of books into these families' homes.
"Gypsy Traveller children are the most at risk in the education system"
(OfSTED 1999)
"Few of the Gypsy Traveller pupils currently in schools have had any opportunity to attend
any form of pre-school or early years setting. Any child without any pre-school experience is
already at risk of underachievement"
(DfES 2003)
Increasingly health visitors are working directly with the Traveller community and may visit
sites or see Travellers who are housed and may no longer travel, but still have a strong
cultural and ethnic identity. However there are still a number of families who are not
registered with GPs and many for whom mobility or a lack of secure stopping places makes it
very difficult to access services in local communities.
What your Bookstart scheme can do
The following ideas, gathered together from authorities already working well with the Traveller
community, should be discussed with your local Bookstart team:

Make contact with your local Traveller Education Service and ensure the appropriate
workers have stocks of Bookstart packs to hand out to eligible families.

If your authority does not have a Traveller Education Service it may be that there is a
local health visitor who has been working with the Traveller community as part of their
remit. Check this possibility out with your local health contacts. If this is the case ensure
that this health visitor has access to all Bookstart packs so that she can gift them to any
families who may have missed out.

If you have problems tracking the appropriate person down, your local authority homeless
unit should be able to help you.

If no-one in your authority has a remit for working with the Travelling community make
sure that all health professionals working with pre-school children are fully briefed about
the importance of ensuring Travelling families with pre-school children receive their
Bookstart packs.

It may be necessary for professionals to be more flexible than usual over the gifting age
for Bookstart packs to Traveller families. Ensure that those gifting the Bookstart pack use
their professional knowledge to determine when a pack would be beneficial for a child,
even if that child is slightly older than is usually recommended. Many Traveller families
will not be in contact with health visitors/early years setting at the guideline gifting time.
Make sure that all professionals involved in Bookstart are aware of this policy.

Ensure that all professionals understand the importance of demonstrating the pack and
the books to parents, many of whom will have poor literacy skills themselves. Suggest
that the gifter explains that the books can be talked about and their own story made up if
the parent is not confident about reading the text word for word.

If you have one, invite your local Traveller Education worker or appropriate health visitor
to be part of your Bookstart steering group.

Include any local Traveller workers on your newsletter list and make sure they are kept up
to date on general Bookstart work.

Ensure that you discuss how you plan to work with Traveller families at your Bookstart
steering group.

Look into possible avenues for funding books which Traveller children may relate to.
Many local Traveller Education Services produce such books.
Suggested books suitable for pre-school children
Norwich Traveller Education Service Tel: 01603 766133
'Shaun's Wellies', ISBN 1 899728 017
Also available as a big book
Durham & Darlington Education Services for Travelling Children
Tel: 01740 656 998
'Where's my teddy?'
‘My Little Book of Numbers’
ISBN 095383221X
'Where's my teddy activity pack'
ISBN 953832252
'My Little Box of Books'
ISBN 0953832228
‘My Little Book of Shapes’
ISBN 953832260
‘My Little Book of Colours’
ISBN 953832244
‘My Little Book of Things I can ..’ ISBN
953832236
West Midlands Consortium Education Service for Travelling Children
Tel: 01902 714646.
‘A First Gypsy Alphabet’
ISBN 095470181X
Hertfordshire Traveller Education Service. Tel: 01992 553703
'Monday Morning’ Available in A3, A4 and A5 sizes.
Suitable for pre-school & KS1/Primary 1 children.
Advisory Service for the Education of Travellers. Tel: 01865 256620.
‘A is for Alphabet T is for Traveller’
ISBN 0954670701
Kids Own Publishing Partnership. Tel: +353 (0)71 64438 www.kidsown.ie
(this book is published in Ireland and features the ditties and rhymes of Irish Traveller
children).
‘Clotty Malotty and All Her Friends’
ISBN 1902432193
Usborne Books Tel: order via Harper Collins 0141 3063100
'Things that go'
ISBN 0746041012
'Touchy Feely Trucks'
ISBN 0746051832
Case Studies
The following seven case studies demonstrate good practice in working with the Traveller
community and are just a sample of the excellent work happening in the UK.
Norfolk
The Bookstart Co-ordinator provides the local Traveller Education early years' advisory
teacher with supplies of all three Bookstart packs. The advisory teacher hands these packs to
eligible families whom she knows will not access the packs via the traditional methods.
Occasionally there is duplication, but this is far outweighed by the benefits of having Bookstart
integrated into the work of the Traveller Education Service.
The advisory teacher often gifts the packs at the introductory visit where early learning
opportunities are discussed and the family is offered support. The packs are gifted along with
information about the local library service and parents are told about the videos and DVDs
which the library offers. This is often of interest to the parents and acts as a means of
encouraging them to take their children along.
The advisory teacher finds that it is sometimes necessary to be flexible about the age of the
children given the packs, although all the children who have received packs are in their early
years. There are good reasons for this:



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There are always children who did not receive the packs at the age they were supposed
to.
There are often eligible children who have siblings for whom the packs would have a
clear benefit.
There are many families living isolated from the settled community and have not yet
visited the library.
Parents may have little or no literacy skills and books may not be part of their children's
early learning experiences.
Work in Norfolk has been developed further by library open afternoons for Traveller families
and the routing of the Mobile Library to visit the various sites within the authority.
Cornwall
Cornwall Library Service currently works with their local Traveller Education Service to
provide Bookstart to Travelling families. The Bookstart co-ordinator gives the Traveller
Education Service the Bookstart packs and they pass them on to the families who are eligible.
A further development has been helping Traveller Education to choose £7,000 of children's
books to set up a project called "Books on Wheels" (with external funding). This provides a
library service to the legal Travellers sites in Cornwall. Both mainstream books and books
written by and published by various Traveller Education Services throughout the county were
bought in for the project.
Swindon
In Swindon the specialist Health Visitor who works with the Traveller community is given a
box of Bookstart baby bags, Bookstart Plus and Treasure Chests each month by the
Bookstart co-ordinator. The Health Visitor then tries to ensure that families who may miss out
receive a pack. The Health Visitor is also part of the Bookstart Steering Group.
Essex
Essex library service has an informal partnership with their Traveller Education Service and
supplies them with approximately 100 bags per year.
Bookstart training for workers is provided and they ensure everyone who is involved on the
sites has information about Bookstart, including Booktouch, the library Under Fives leaflet and
Baby and Toddler leaflet as Travellers Education workers are keen advocates of these.
Traveller Education gift the Bookstart baby pack to children between the ages of 0 - 5 years.
This wide spread is to ensure as many children get the packs as possible and it also supports
the Traveller cultural belief that their children are 'babies' until they are around five years. At
the same time Bookstart is used as a tool to help families understand that their children can
enjoy books and learning as babies.
Traveller Education in Essex fully understands the ethos of Bookstart and what possibilities
surround the gifting of the Bookstart pack. Both Area Managers/Advisory Teachers and their
fellow workers came together with the libraries for Bookstart Awareness sessions in July and
had a lot to say about the packs. Bookstart in Essex will be advising them that where they gift
a Treasure Chest to a family they may also gift a baby pack if they feel it is appropriate.
Traveller Education are included in the annual audit and receive copies of the quarterly
Bookstart Newsletter.
As Essex have mobile libraries visiting some sites these always have supplies of Baby and
Toddler times flyers and these are also made available in site offices.
Middlesbrough
Family outreach workers visit the relatively few traveller families that visit Middlesbrough.
These workers check that they have had their Bookstart bags and give them one if they have
not. Picture books have also been ordered for our library stock which feature Traveller
families.
Surrey
Bookstart in Surrey has been working with their local Children's Outreach Officer since March
2005. The Outreach Officer had at that point just taken delivery of a Playbus and was aiming
to visit six of Surrey’s Traveller sites. 30 baby packs and 30 Bookstart Plus packs were
provided for the Outreach Worker to use during her visits. These were all successfully
delivered to Traveller children over a six-month period.
A further 30 each of baby packs, Bookstart Plus packs and Treasure Chests have since been
delivered. The worker is very enthusiastic about the Bookstart packs and what she can
achieve with them – she has already got extra funding in order to put an additional book,
specially produced for Traveller children and showing children from Traveller communities,
into the packs.
East Lothian
As there is no Traveller Education Service in East Lothian the Bookstart Co-ordinator started
work to reach Traveller families through the local authority Homeless worker. The Homeless
worker was able to advise the Bookstart Co-ordinator that there was a Health Visitor working
with the Traveller community in the neighbouring Local Authority, Midlothian, who had built
links with the Traveller site within East Lothian and visited families there regularly. In
consultation with the health visitor, it was decided that they should be given extra stocks of
Bookstart packs for these families using the East Lothian site and that they would ensure that
those families received their packs.
An excellent case of Local Authority co-operation.
Conclusion
It is very important that all Bookstart schemes strive to include the Traveller community into
their work on Bookstart. Traveller children benefit greatly from receiving these packs and
Bookstart books are often treasured possessions within the home. More often than not there
are dedicated workers already linking into the Travelling community and a simple starting
point is to make contact with these workers and ensure they have Bookstart packs to hand
out to families. If there are definitely no workers in your area, then an awareness-raising
exercise is necessary, to ensure that all relevant professionals are aware of the importance of
these children receiving their Bookstart packs.