Literacy and Parenting Skills (LAPS) is an innovative family literacy program designed to provide literacy and parenting skills to at-risk parents who wish such training. Low literacy materials based on parenting topics have been adapted to strengthen the literacy skills of the parents and to give them strategies to model good literacy practices with their children. The main LAPS manual published in the fall of 1996 includes facilitators' instructions, participants' handouts, and an outline of 12 - 2 1/2 hour sessions. Topics covered by these sessions include: Building Self-esteem In Your Children, Positive Discipline, Anger Management, Communication and Listening Skills, Nutrition, Safety, Conflict Management, Families, Ages and Stages, as well as opening and closing sessions.

LAPS was created in Calgary, Alberta at Bow Valley College, in partnership with the Further Education Society of Alberta, a registered charitable organization dedicated to providing lifelong learning opportunities to whose who will benefit from education and training.

The LAPS project team has also developed an English as a Second Language program and an Aboriginal program. These sessions have been changed to reflect cross-cultural approaches and cultural sensitivity appropriate for the participants. Two new sessions have been created to deal with concerns specific to ESL and Aboriginal participants: Passing on Our Values, and Dealing with the School.

The materials in the Aboriginal component of the LAPS program have been adapted by Aboriginal groups for use by Aboriginal parents, both in a rural and urban setting. A pre-session has been designed which will allow people to learn a little about their history and to acknowledge their feelings about that history and the impact that it has on them.

LAPS acknowledges the wisdom of creating a project that is grounded in the interests and established needs of its participants as the cornerstone - namely, parenting and children. Currently, our program is attended by Aboriginal and culturally distinct parents as well as mainstream parents who want to strengthen their own parenting and literacy skills and their ability to assist their children's language and literacy development. The LAPS program model encourages the building of partnerships within the community; participants from existing community programs are invited to use our materials. For example, LAPS classes are being offered throughout Canada at women's shelters, at family drop in centres in low-income housing projects, at jails, and at community centres in high needs areas.

• For information on the main LAPS manual, the LAPS-ESL manual, Grandir avec mon enfant or the Aboriginal LAPS manual - click here.

In addition, work has included the development of a training package, which is used to train literacy coordinators, ESL instructors and interested community workers to facilitate a LAPS program in their community. We have trained over 1,900 people throughout Canada. We have also presented at conferences across Canada.

Our program has allowed communities who embrace enthusiastically this family literacy model, the opportunity to access a program which is sound both from the perspective of literacy development (and how parents assist in the development of their children's literacy) and from a general parenting education perspective.

While there has been support from our funders, many of the training workshop sites (all of the aboriginal and many of the mainstream and ESL serving agencies) raised dollars to either piggy-back onto these funded training sessions or to bring us in on their own to train their people. Costs continue to be kept low in order to reach the target population. Most hosts are literacy organizations who invite neighbours from parent education and immigrant serving agencies, health organizations, school district and many other social service and education departments to name a few. Most training workshops have been supplemented with tuition fees.

• For information on LAPS training workshops - click here.

In the fall of 1999 the “Path to Learning” video was developed, portraying the LAPS program as it operates in a variety of settings. The video provides a glimpse of the program to trainee facilitators; those interested in offering the program, and to potential funders. There has been considerable interest in it (based on sales) in Canada and the USA.

• For information on the “Path to Learning” LAPS video - click here.

In 2000, additional work was completed on supplements to enhance the materials then available and to accommodate parent/child groups. They included:
• 5 interactive units involving parent and child, focused on previously established family topics in original LAPS manuals
• 4 easy-to-read articles on topics of interest to parents;
• LAPS-ESL manual adaptations for new Canadians with very limited English skills;
• LAPS-ESL manual adaptations for ESL participants at the Canadian Language Benchmarks 4 - 8;
• and a bibliography of culturally-sensitive children's books which are connected to the LAPS family topics for multicultural groups.

• For information on the LAPS-ESL supplemental materials - click here

In addition, the continuous interest demonstrated by the Francophone community in developing a manual for Francophones across Canada has resulted in the development of Grandir avec mon enfant: une adaptation de Literacy and Parenting Skills.

• For information on ordering Gandir avec mon enfant - click here.