Public Library System

Baroness Hollins Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for securing this important debate. I am going to focus my remarks on the role of volunteers in supporting people who traditionally have made little or no use of libraries, people who could form a completely new audience for them. But volunteers would need to be an additional resource to support such extended services, not a replacement for fully qualified librarians. Not surprisingly, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals has concerns about the use of volunteers to replace qualified staff, stressing that they would be unable to serve the community comprehensively—and the word “comprehensively” is key here.

As a public service, libraries are required under the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments to their service to support access for people with protected characteristics. My interest in this debate is to consider the role of libraries in the lives of people with learning disabilities. Given that the majority of young people with learning difficulties leave school with very low literacy skills, I suggest that their need for library resources in the community should be a priority, but they need support to access these resources. The 2011 Future Libraries report suggested that:

“By breaking down the barriers of tradition, councils are bringing libraries into the 21st century and meeting the needs of a new generation of library users”.

The authors went on to emphasise that:

“‘Rationalisation’ must be underpinned by a thorough analysis of people’s needs and councils must be able to demonstrate that those needs will continue to be met from the rationalised service”.

The recent Libraries All-Party Parliamentary Group report, The Beating Heart of the School: Improving Educational Attainment Through School Libraries and Librarians, made the point in its foreword that every child growing up in the UK should have the chance to learn and develop through a good school library. The report, however, failed to address the need for access to libraries for children attending special schools—who, incidentally, are even less likely to own a book than the one in three quoted by the noble Lord. The APPG focused its research only on primary and secondary schools. It also commented that library professionals could develop the school,

“as a hub of the community by: Building links with the public library service to support children’s learning outside the classroom”.

Research by the National Literacy Trust has found that one in every six adults in the UK struggles with literacy, with a literacy level below that expected of an 11 year-old, and we know that 60% or more of the prison population has difficulties in basic literacy skills. Libraries, whether in schools or in the community, do not just support literacy, they also support an enjoyment of reading, provide better access to information, and can encourage an interest in books by, for example, arranging discussion groups and reading groups or book clubs.

I will give an example of how a grant-funded scheme in Kent has enabled librarians, working with volunteers, to open up public libraries to this hitherto neglected group. Six libraries in Kent have established book clubs for non-reading adults. Volunteers are also getting involved without additional funding in libraries elsewhere, including in Worcester, where I believe the first joint university and city library has been established. It is known as The Hive, and is a venue where a range of services are co-located. Other libraries pursuing these projects include those in Ealing, Thurrock and Merton. The Hive was an early adopter of book clubs for people with learning disabilities, who find pictures easier to read than words. What are they reading?

I declare an interest at this point as the executive chair of a charitable organisation called Books Beyond Words, which publishes picture books without any words on topics of interest to older children and adults. The 40 titles in the Books Beyond Words series cover many health, social care and criminal justice topics such as going to the doctor or being mugged, as well as social issues such as falling in love and books about sport and exercise, healthy eating, and moving house. These pictorial stories are especially powerful when read in a group, prompting fascinating discussions and amusement for the participants and the group’s facilitators.

Beyond Words book clubs in libraries open up a free resource to people who cannot read conventional books and provide them with an enjoyable and stimulating local activity to enliven their week and help them to be more included in their local community. The members choose which book to read, and their choices may sometimes seem surprising. Despite initial concerns about the sensitive nature of many of the books, the experience in Kent is that once the groups have read some of the more everyday stories, they choose tougher ones, too, and relate well to them with help from the group discussion and facilitation from the volunteers. Two groups have now invited community police and shown them some criminal justice books in the series. One group has been invited back to the police station, while one group has invited a professional from the local hospital to a session and then run a book group at an event at the local hospital on improving awareness of the health of people with learning disabilities. Volunteers provide essential support for these extension activities, too.

The Arts Council CEO, Alan Davey, says that the libraries’ role in the community, reaching vulnerable and excluded people, will extend to being invited into other community services or workplaces to meet particular needs—just as these new book clubs in Kent and elsewhere are discovering. Beyond Words group members are becoming regular and positive users of library services and see it as their right, rather than a privilege or something that is not for them as they cannot read, although some of them are beginning to borrow books with words as well. However, when local people were invited to a Beyond Words taster session in Wimbledon library as part of the 2010 Wimbledon BookFest, of the 12 people with learning disabilities who attended, only three recalled ever having been in a library before.

Some book club members are taking part in Kent Libraries’ Six Book Challenge, which incentivises readers with a certificate and small gifts if they read six books. Kent librarians now recognise that reading through pictures rather than words is a valid approach. Participating in a book club in the library means that members can be drawn into other community activities. For example, in Dover, the library and community cafe are in a complex called the Discovery Centre, and the Discovery book club last week spent the first 10 minutes of its session adding to the voices of what the people of Dover like and do not like about their town, and helping to think about what its £1 million lottery grant should be spent on. The co-leader of this book club is a volunteer who himself has a learning disability.

There is still much to learn, particularly about how to support networks to become more self-sustaining, how to develop book clubs that integrate with other book clubs and link to other community activities, and how to include even more excluded individuals and reach particular populations, such as those in prison, in education in special schools or with special needs in mainstream schools.

Although book clubs are free to the members, there are costs involved in recruiting, training and supporting volunteers, as well as in covering the cost of the Disclosure and Barring Service. Who are these volunteers and what do they get out of the experience? The Kent Libraries Time2Give volunteering programme has been invaluable in terms of recruiting suitable volunteers for work within the libraries, and a grant-funded project manager. The grant has enabled the librarians and volunteers to attend a half-day training course on how to read books without words in a group and how to set up a book club.

Volunteers have come from a variety of backgrounds and routes, including existing volunteers within the current volunteering scheme who were interested in finding out about these particular book clubs.

As might be expected, people who already have an interest and positive regard for people with disabilities have volunteered, too. They are all people who want to be more involved in their local community and have enjoyed the challenge of setting up something new and finding out what works. Their satisfaction is high when group members are having fun and learning. One volunteer was recently thanked with a huge smile and gentle touch to her arm by a man who does not speak; it was a much cherished moment for her. But they are also given positive encouragement by other casual library users, who see the groups as they are passing through. There is an added value of greater positive visibility for people who are often marginalised. Does the Minister agree that children and adults with learning disabilities could benefit hugely from our growing recognition of community libraries as hubs for information and learning with the additional help of volunteers? Could he suggest other ways in which volunteers could help to improve access to library services for people with learning disabilities and other non-traditional library users?