Language and cultural support
The Council supports children who do not have English as their
first language, operating in nursery and primary schools.
Family Learning Service
The aim of the Family Learning Service is to enable parents to
extend their involvement in their children’s education so that they
can help them to achieve their full potential.
The service works with children from birth to the end of the
primary school years and their parents/carers, in a variety of
venues where there are children and parents, as well as in their
homes.
What we offer
We offer courses in creative family learning, family literacy
and family numeracy and all our programmes are responsive to the
language and cultural needs of communities. Most of the work is in
partnership with other organisations such as Council departments,
providers, professional and voluntary groups, libraries, health
centres and schools.
This work is community focussed and takes place in groups,
individually, in schools and centres and in homes.
The service has teams that focus on particular activities:
Family literacy/home-school liaison work in schools
- Offers workshops and courses to enable parents to support their
children’s learning
- Develops book and educational toy loans
- Makes home visits
- Provides translations and interpretations
- Organises adult classes in response to need and to provide
progression (for example classroom assistant courses)
- Facilitates two-way communication between families and
schools
- Provides parents’ rooms where possible in schools
Family literacy and family numeracy programmes
- Provides programmes for schools that do not have one of our
workers
- Writes an accredited programme that is practical and responsive
to needs
- Provides a tutor, teacher and crèche support to deliver the
programmes in schools
- Works with parents and children separately and then
together
- Is responsive to communities’ needs enabling learning in Urdu
and Bengali as well as in English by providing multi-lingual
tutors
- Celebrates success and ensures progression by providing
nationally recognised accreditation and a yearly presentation in
the Rochdale Town Hall
Early family learning
Provides a course for children 3 - 4 years and their
parents.
Creative family learning
Includes hard-to-reach families in joint learning activities
- Uses creative projects and community artists to facilitate
first steps into learning
- Targets communities which few other resources for family
learning
- Is inventive about provision, having days at weekends and
educational visits, to attract those who do not easily engage in
family learning (eg fathers)
- Ensures links with other provision to encourage continual
learning
Bi-lingual bookstart
Provides FREE bi-lingual book bags for babies at seven
months, 18 months and three years
- Works with health visitors to ensure that all families receive
the bags
- Provides follow-up activities about enjoying books and early
language development and literacy
- Encourages the development of the first language as well as
English
- Provides free book bags for babies at six months, 18
months and three years
- Contain a bi-lingual book and other activities including
crayons, a rhyme tape, puppets
- Information about library membership and sharing stories with
young children
- Given out to all babies by health visitors in baby clinics or
nurseries
Other workshops and courses
- Family Literacy and Family Numeracy, Key Stage 1
Two hour workshops, woodwork, puppets, making books
- Being Healthy: Exercise, diet and
safety.
Two hours a week for 5 weeks