6. Accessibility (15%)

  • women have often been the family member responsible for education, but often face many barriers, including money issues, time to learn and do literacy with children, program times often inconvenient, transportation, child care, domestic violence, and lack of support from friends and family
  • rural distances/ rural areas
  • isolation
  • personal stigma attached to attending groups

7. Program approach (8%)

  • the involvement of parents and children
  • the approach used in the delivery of the program
  • to provide literacy in a fun approach learning through play"

8. Poverty (4%)

9. Training (41%)

  • training to set up and run these programs is lacking or very difficult to obtain

10. Recruiting volunteers (4%)

Viewing these issues in general groups can help us identify potential challenges that need to be addressed when developing and implementing family literacy programs:

Administrative Issues

  • training
  • collaborations
  • public awareness
  • volunteers

Programming Issues

  • recruitment
  • accessibility community-based
  • accessibility/support
  • prevention/parents' role
  • recognizing strengths

Participants' Issues

  • money/poverty
  • other support
  • time
  • domestic violence

B. Across Canada

In addition to the issues identified in Alberta, family literacy practitioners across Canada who responded to our survey added the following as key issues in family literacy:

  • scheduling programs ("Having [reading] circles get under way in April and May was too close to the summer. September would be a better start-up time.")
  • personal stigma attached
  • reaching visible minority - under education and poverty
  • targeting low income, low literacy families
  • should be community-based, not in educational facility
  • It is always challenging to develop programs for rural areas because of distances and difficulties with transportation.
  • making family literacy programs more widely available for parents and primary caregivers to attend voluntarily (not by referral from an agency)
  • providing training to facilitators and leaders to ensure high quality programs.

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