Bokstart, Swedish Arts Council

see videos

Programme name Country Date of information
Bokstart Sweden 17 October 2019
Question Answer
About the Organisation  
Organisation name Swedish Arts Council
Organisation address P.O. Box 27215, SE-102 53 Stockholm, Sweden Office: Borgvägen 1-5 www.artscouncil.se  
Goal/objective Mission: Create the conditions for all children to develop a language that is as good as possible according to their conditions, and which makes it possible to develop as individuals with the ability to actively participate in society.
Contact Person Nina Suatan
Anna Hällgren
Position of Contact Person Project leader
Organisation website www.bokstart.se
www.artscouncil.se www.kulturradet.se
Organisation type Government authority
How many staff does your organisation employ? 2 (Bokstart, Arts council Sweden)
About the Programme  
Basic details  
Programme name Bokstart
Country/Province/City where the programme takes place Sweden
Year started 2014
Programme goal/objective Goals: strengthen parents in their important role; develop collaboration between public libraries, child health care and preschool as well as with the family; increase, and disseminate, knowledge of young children’s language and reading development
Funding sources Government
Geographic coverage We have a government remit to spread Bokstart in Sweden 2017-2020. Our projects are spread from the northern to the most southern parts of the country.
Purpose of the programme  
Not for profit? Not for profit
Religious or political purpose? None
Local consistency of model  
Is your programme model consistent across your geographic area, or are there regional differences? Consistent: addresses children 0-3 years; parental support; cooperation between public libraries and healthcare/preschool (both or one of them)
Not consistent: number of books handed out; book titles (chosen by projects); number of meetings with families; ages of children when they receive home visits, books and are invited to activities; methods differ – home visits by librarian and/or nurse, library activities, family centre activities…; led by public library or county library
Book Packs  
What are the contents of your gifting pack? Books (one to three), information material, information from local library etc. Varies between the different projects.
Is your programme offered free of charge to all families? yes
Partnerships and Delivery  
What are your primary ‘points of contact’ with the population you serve? Library, Health clinic, Preschool, family centre, Open preschool  
Who gifts/hands-out your pack to families?   librarians, healthcare workers, nursery school staff    
Please list your other programme partnerships Partners can vary within the different projects. For us, at the Swedish arts council, we are working on building partnerships with the National agency for education and the National board of health and welfare. As well as with MTM (Swedish agency for accessible media) and SPSM (The National agency for special needs education and schools)
If your programme uses volunteers, please give some more details  
Audience  
Is the programme universal or targeted? Most projects work with targeted groups: asylum seekers, socio economically vulnerable families, areas with low school results. Some projects target all children of certain age groups. Some projects combine targeting all children of a certain age with target groups of special needs.
How many children does your programme serve a year?  
At what age/gifting period do children receive your programme.   Birth – 6 months, 6 – 12 months, 12 – 24 months, 2-4 years
Diversity provision  
Does your program include provisions or resources for children with special needs? Through our website Bokstart.se we provide articles and films on different topics related to language development to disseminate knowledge, primarily targeted to the various professions involved. Also about special needs. The projects get to know individual families and can provide resources like customized books and relevant information.
What language populations does your programme serve? All langunge popuations that we meet are served by our programme as best we can. Some times with the use of translators. Some of our information material is translated into 25 languages aand can be printed out from our website free of charge.
Evaluation and research  
Have you conducted programme evaluation or research (including longitudinal)? If yes, has this evaluation/research been published?  After our pilot persion (2014-2017) we mde an evaluation. A new, nationwide,  evaluation, is planned for next year. Research is being made by some of our projects (not longitudinal though).
Further information or comments  
Please give us any further information that would be helpful for understanding your programme Our government remit is for 2017-2020, we award grants for 10 million SEK every year (four years). We work to have Bokstart permanented by the government. Next year we will know if we can continue to distribute grants also after 2020.
Please feel free to make any other comments Most of our projects start in a small scale and expand during the three years that they can get fundings from the arts council. After three years the are supposed to include Bokstart in their ordinary work. From the pilots we can see that this is really happening.

Videos

Videos and Powerpoints

1 July 2020 meeting – Targeting the hard to reach

Anna Hällgren and Nina Suatan: Swedish Arts Council, Kulturradet, Sweden – Testing different methods suited to specific local and regional needs

17 Nov 2020 meeting – Progress of new programmes

Anna Hällgren and Nina Suatan: Swedish Arts Council, Kulturradet, Sweden