MY TURN, Boulware:  Books + support are important to healthy childhood

By Callee Boulware, special to Statehouse Report  |  When we consider what we know about children and families in the critical early years, it is important think about what research supports.  We know access to books is an important part of a healthy childhood.  What we also know is that books, on their own, will not accomplish what children need.  It is essential that parents and caregivers are supported, educated, and engaged by voices they trust in understanding what to do with books, when, and why.

Simply stated, in addition to distributing books, we must also wrap around families and support the routines and behaviors that will make daily reading, stories and increased language interaction a reality.  The Reach Out and Read intervention is working every day across every county in South Carolina towards this goal.

Routines and relationships are critical components of a child’s earliest years, building bonds with those who love them and building their brains through meaningful and consistent “serve and return” interactions.  Through Reach Out and Read in check-ups across South Carolina, families are given critical skill-building and knowledge around how to help create these important interactions together with their children at home, time focused together on books, stories, and snuggles.   Reach Out and Read is helping to change the story for families in every county of our state.

Reach Out and Read (ROR) is an evidence-based intervention integrated into medical clinics throughout the Carolinas and the country.  It is designed to foster intentional skill-building in parents, resilience in families, and positive bonding between children and families.  We know shared reading can help develop strong parent-child bonds that last a lifetime, buffering toxic stress and building resiliency.  Literacy is a critical skill and early childhood is the critical stage for equipping children for a lifetime of success.

Reach Out and Read’s two-generation approach helps move primary care to a more comprehensive approach to child and family health.  The intervention lives at the intersection of health and literacy.  Trained medical providers use a valuable tool, books and anticipatory guidance, to talk to parents and other caregivers about what’s happening in their lives and discuss challenges, opportunities and the benefits of reading aloud to their young children.  The effects of literacy promotion on early brain development, including improved language skills and school readiness, are well-documented.

ROR has been hard at work in growing and expanding across the state for 20 years. Every day in checkups across South Carolina thousands of primary care providers, who are trained in the ROR intervention, are approaching well-visits in a different way.  At each check-up, a ROR trained provider supports parents in feeling comfortable sharing books, language, stories and snuggles together with their young child as a part of their daily routine. At the same time, the book and interactions in the check-up become an important part of the providers developmental surveillance of the child and a best practice of primary care.   At the end of the check-up, families take home a new, developmentally aligned book to implement their “prescription to read.” In the clinic, ROR provides an important foundation while other resources and connections can be built to support families.

ROR is endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and is a part of their Bright Futures guidelines.  Across South Carolina, more than 150 clinical locations participate in the Reach Out and Read intervention.  Together, Reach Out and Read trained providers are serving more than 142,000 children and their families each year (prescribing more than 280,000 books EACH YEAR).    What makes the ROR intervention so unique are a few key elements. The intervention:

• utilizes the trusted and consistent voice of the medical provider
• can be scaled and is population based, as more than 90% of children 0-5 visit their doctor each year
• has a significant evidence-base, demonstrating success in helping children enter school more prepared for success and support positive routines and behavior change in parents
• is two-generational, and supports the important parent/child dyad

The S.C. General Assembly has been supporting ROR in SC for three years.  This investment has allowed us to expand our reach, serving 60,000 additional children and their families since fiscal year 2016. The investment by the state of South Carolina is a catalyst – it allows ROR to leverage the General Assembly’s support with a match from private donations, providing a sustainable public/private partnership to continue to grow ROR to serve more children and families across South Carolina.

It is critical to focus on the hard work of supporting children and families in the early years.  We must meet families where they are and support the touchpoints and structures that are in place.  The primary care medical home is a critical place to support families in meaningful ways.  The work is not easy, but we can rely on the strength of evidence-based interventions focused on two-generational supports, like ROR, as a foundational part of the system for families in South Carolina.

Callee Boulware is executive director of Reach Out and Read Carolinas.

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