Authors including Sir Michael Morpurgo and Malorie Blackman have written an open letter urging the government to invest in early years reading. A BookTrust survey suggests that only half of children aged between one and two from low-income families are read to daily. The letter notes that some families struggle to access books and support. "It is not right that children from poorer backgrounds are deprived of a life that is rich in reading," it says. Signatories include current laureate Joseph Coelho plus Julia Donaldson, Dame Jacqueline Wilson, Sir Quentin Blake and Michael Rosen. "It is vital to recognise that children who read regularly…

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LTR has been engaged by one of the Government's leading education teams to develop and share it's best reading practices across the whole of the Eastern Region. The Highfield 'Stronger Practice Hub', based in Ipswich has commissioned LTR to develop it's work with Early Years settings and turn this into guidance for settings across East Anglia. The work will begin at the end of January 2024 and will include our work on Storytimes, mini-libraries for settings and recommendations for books for pupils.

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LTR is very grateful to the SE Area Committee of the Borough Council for giving it a grant of £4,000 to continue its work in the area. At a SEAC meeting on Wednesday 13th September, the committee was very complimentary about LTR's work over the last 7 years and recognised that its focus was entirely aligned with the committee's key priorities. They particularly liked LTR's work with parents and babies,…

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The leading adult literacy charity, Read Easy Ipswich, has decided to amalgamate with LTR, forming a total team of 46 volunteers. The group will continue as an identifiable team within LTR, ably managed by Alison Stewart-Wheeler and Jenny Rivett. The combined team will have more scope to grow and support more services to improve literacy across Ipswich.

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The Cooperative Bank Plc has awarded LTR a grant of £1,000 to develop its services across Ipswich.

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LTR has been awarded £9,999 by the Lottery 'Awards for All' fund. John Helleur, Chair of LTR said that this is a major step forward for the local charity as it starts to bring in substantial funding from outside of Ipswich. "This grant enables us to build on our most successful year in 22/23 with the funding to start setting up further PEEP parents and babies sessions in several parts of the town" "This growth now means that we need…

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LTR was able to get back to normal operation from July 2022 and has had its most successful 12 months since it was launched in 2016. Nearly 12,000 people across Ipswich benefited from the charity's work, with nearly 9,000 free books supplied.…

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LTR gave away its 20,000th free book in Ipswich by the end of March 2023, after 6 and a half years of operation. This target was hit 2 years ahead of its 2025 expected date. We are particularly proud of having supplied mini-libraries to nearly every one of 40 nurseries (Early years settings) and 17 school nurseries. These libraries included books on 'feelings' as well as popular picture storybooks, and also dual-language and 'starting school' books.

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LTR provided a free book to all children in 40 nurseries across Ipswich for Christmas 2022. This year we delivered 2,350 books in bright Christmassy paper carrier bags.

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After 5 years of operation in Ipswich, LTR has now reached the major milestone of having given away 10,000 free books, mainly in the disadvantaged areas of the town. The team looks forward to hitting the 20,000 milestone by 2025.

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During the Autumn, LTR had to move out of its previous accommodation in the Volunteering Matters building and shift its stock of books to a new home in the Eastern Angles Centre, in Gatacre Road. The new home is excellent, and the LTR team is enjoying the friendly community atmosphere and…

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For the second year in a row, LTR has provided a free book-bag to most children in nurseries across Ipswich. Some 2,300 free books were distributed in the run-up to Christmas, providing much needed presents in many struggling households across the town. About 12 volunteers gathered with social distancing over three sessions to sort, pack and transport the book-bags to all parts of the town.

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LTR has been supported by the Ipswich Opportunity Area to provide dual-language children's books for the libraries in 13 early years settings (nurseries) in Ipswich, in order to help the many ESL (English as a Second Language) families in the town. LTR hopes to be able to expand this provision to all 40 settings that it works with across Ipswich during the coming year.

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The Ipswich Opportunity Area has agreed to largely cover the costs of LTR providing a library of top quality books for each of 13 nurseries in disadvantaged areas of Ipswich. We hope to be able to obtain the several hundred books during May and get them delivered to these early years setting during June. The hope is that this scheme can be expanded to cover more of the 40 settings which LTR supports with regular Storytime visits and free book-bags for pupils.

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Because of Covid restrictions LTR has focused on giving free books to as many disadvantaged families as possible over the last 12 months. In all, we gave away nearly 6,400 books, mostly to children. Overall, this should have benefited about 8,500 people. We are indebted to the staff in the 40 nurseries, 19 schools, HomeStart, ICENI plus the Suffolk County Council who identified pupils and families, and who distributed our book-bags to the recipients. Keep Reading!!

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Despite the pandemic restrictions, LTR was able to give away a free book to 2,557 pupils in most of the early years settings across Ipswich in the last 5 months. Given the impact of the Covid restrictions on children and their long-suffering parents, we decided that we would give books to every year-group in nurseries, mainly in the disadvantaged…

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At short notice, in June, LTR was asked by Suffolk County Council to put together book-bags and associated activities for 933 disadvantaged children across Suffolk. Despite a very short timescale of a few weeks and the restrictions of lock-down, the team was able to rise to the challenge. In all, 1866…

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An initiative set up to support disadvantaged families during the Covid-19 pandemic is gearing up to deliver hundreds of books to children across Ipswich this month, thanks to the generosity of a local reading charity and an education consultancy. The Community Shelf project will deliver more than 400 books donated by Let's Talk Reading and Greenfields Education, an education consultancy based in Manningtree. The Community Shelf was created at the start of the crisis by the Raedwald Multi Academy Trust and Copleston High School to deliver essential products including food, toiletries, clothing and…

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Between April and December 2019, LTR has partnered with 7 Ipswich school to investigate the impact of some conditions which may inhibit children's reading abilities and perhaps affect their behaviours. There are many conditions to be considered, but for this particular trial, LTR focused on Retained Primitive Reflexes with expert partners, the…

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LTR met recently with key staff from Citizens Advice Bureau to link its activities to the Social Prescribing initiative being rolled out across Ipswich. CAB has taken responsibility for linking every doctor's surgery in Ipswich to organisations which can provide patients with non-medical help. LTR has been particularly keen to link surgeries to the services provided by Read Easy Ipswich and Suffolk Babies. Recognising that 8,000 people in Ipswich will struggle to read medical instructions and forms, and will probably be depressed by the impact of their lack of reading skills, it seems essential that surgeries, via CAB, can sign-post such patients to the coaching services of Read Easy Ipswich. Similarly, if we are to encourage all new parents to…

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Children today read less frequently than any previous generation and enjoy reading less than young people did in the past, according to new research. The work, to be published by the National Literacy Trust in the run-up to World Book Day on Thursday, shows that in 2019 just 26% of under-18s spent some time…

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