40 Nº 1: March 2004

Our correspondent in the United Kingdom

Jenny Evans

My year in Canada seems like a lifetime ago now - I've been living and working in London for the past four months. During this time I've managed to fit in my first venture onto the continent with a weekend trip to Paris on the Eurostar, with a friend from home. Definitely one of 'those' highlights to add to the many I have experienced, from the Musée d'Orsay to the Eiffel Tower, the Champs d'Elysées and more.

I thought I would take a trip out of London for my first library visit - I had heard many good things about Birmingham Libraries children's library service and I also wanted to catch up with friends based there. Janet Brisland, the manager of the Centre for the Child at Birmingham Central Library, was kind enough to meet with me to tell me about what is happening in children's services in Birmingham.

Birmingham City Council is the largest municipal council in the United Kingdom. Council services are currently managed from centrally held budgets, but from 5th April 2004 many services, including libraries, will be managed locally within the eleven constituencies. The library services are made up of forty service points and a mobile library service. Everybody lives within two miles of a library or is serviced by a mobile library. It is a city made up of areas of affluence and deprivation. There are many newly arrived families, which make for very diverse communities. Finally, there are also high numbers of single parent families and very young parents. This is definitely a community in which a library can make a real difference.

The Centre for the Child is a centre for excellence, their main focus being children, families, carers and other people working with children. Community libraries offer the same services as the Centre for the Child. Many people use this library in addition to their community library, the Centre reliant on adults bringing children into the library, as it is located in the Birmingham city centre. It has a wonderful location: the first part of the library you see when you enter the building is the Centre for the Child with its own entrance within the building. The rest of the library is situated on the floors above.

One particularly unique feature of The Centre for the Child is their Childcare Information Bureau, which is supported by central and local government. It is the information arm of the library, so that people can come in with questions on any aspect of childcare and have them answered by a professional. It also recruits people in the field. Every local authority in the UK has a Childcare Information Bureau.

Public libraries in the UK rely on local government for funding, although as in Canada they need to find additional options. The difference appears to be that public libraries in the UK are able to take advantage of government funded programs.

One such example is the New Opportunities Fund (http://www.nof.org.uk). This is a '...Lottery Distributor created in 1998 to award grants to education, health and environment projects throughout the UK' Government statutes determine the type of project that can be funded by this program. One well-known project is that of the People's Network (http://www.peoplesnetwork.gov.uk/about/index.asp) which is part of a government initiative to enable everybody in the UK to have access to computers and internet - not just hardware and software but training as well. Public libraries are recognised as the best way to implement the initiative, as they are found in every community. In Birmingham it is particularly useful for groups such as immigrants to keep in touch with friends and family at home.

Another resource Birmingham Central Library is able to draw on is Neighbourhood Renewal Funding (http://www.birmingham.gov.uk), which is money, held locally by government for organisations to bid into to provide services.

Surestart (http://www.surestart.gov.uk/about surestart) is another government-funded initiative working in very closely defined areas that are areas of deprivation. Examples include children 0-4, parenting skills and healthy living skills. The area can be as specific as a particular street. There are now twelve Surestart areas, with some of them having appointed librarians to help meet 'library specific' targets, which include increasing the use of libraries in these communities.

You cannot mention children's services at Birmingham Central Library without mentioning Bookstart (http://www.bookstart.co.uk), a program that I am sure many of you are already familiar with. It was the first national books for babies program in the world. Birmingham was one of the first authorities to take it up and it is now a standard across the country. Parents are given a Bookstart bag at their baby's 6-9 month hearing check, seeing libraries and health centres work together. The supermarket chain Sainsburys were sponsoring Bookstart, but were unable to continue and it is now being supported by Central government. A Bookstart + package is available for 18-30 month old children and there is now a Bookstart plus project which has been taken on by Surestart. This will target 3-4 year old children.

There are a number of hard to reach groups of children found within the Birmingham area. One of these is children in care or 'looked after children.' These are children in foster care and residential care. The city has a corporate parenting pledge and all departments within the City Council respond to young people by providing services. The Paul Hamlyn Foundation (http://www.phf.org.uk/index.htm) supports work with these children and this has seen collections of books put in residential units and the library taking creative activities to these children.

The city also has a detached youth worker who works with various groups to get children into the library. They also work with potential offenders, young offenders and children in care. This can involve activities such as creative music projects. This youth worker started a dyslexia drop-in group, run in partnership with Birmingham Dyslexia. Funding was obtained to create dyslexia information points to provide support for parents and young people. Once a month there is a drop-in time for this group. The library also has library patrons with a mixture of learning and mental health and physical disabilities. One example of resources the library provides for these groups are clear vision books which include braille as well as text.

The relationship between the public library and the school library is one that I have always been interested to hear about. Each community library has a catchment area and they keep in contact with the schools. However in terms of resources there is a Schools Library Service, which is a contracted-out service which has to earn its own income although they get some central funding. Information about them can be found on the Birmingham City Council website mentioned above. They run training activities, school advisory services and in-service training. They provide project loans to schools - but schools have to pay for these. The public library provides bulk loans to organisations such as homeless projects but not to schools.

The library also supports what we in Australia call home schooling by making the library available for a group known as Education Otherwise (http://www.education-otherwise.org/) to meet in and also by making sure these children are included in general library programming. Education Otherwise is a support service for families who are home schooling (called home based education). They include people who can provide support as well as resources.

On a very different and interesting note, Birmingham Libraries have a 'Young Readers Birmingham' festival that runs for two weeks in May and June. Over two weeks writers, poet and illustrators visit the library and the festival culminates in a Big Bonanza Book Bash over the May bank holiday weekend. I am hoping to head back up to Birmingham for this event if I possibly can - it sounds like loads of fun!

Finally, Birmingham run a 'Stories from the web' program (http://www.storiesfrom theweb.org) that involves children contributing to the website. It developed from an experiment run by the UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN). The website is split into two areas - the original for 8-11 year olds and a new area for 11-14 year olds. It is definitely worth having a look at the website.

Birmingham City Libraries are doing many amazing things and are in the position to take advantage of a number of different funding options. Issues such as staffing and resourcing continue to challenge them as in all libraries. They again prove the point I made in my Canadian columns that people who work in children's services are very approachable and believe in what they do.

Meanwhile, I continue on with my working experience in London and hope to continue to see as much as I can in the time I have here.