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Early Childhood Development
May 1, 2023

Latrobe Valley Imagination Library

  • Project details:
  • Project commencement: May 1, 2023

  • Funded by: The Latrobe Health Assembly

  • Project delivered by: United Way Australia

Project summary:

The first 1000 days of life is a critical time for physical, cognitive, social, and emotional health. What happens in the first 1000 days has been shown to have an impact throughout life. Literacy levels for children are low for Latrobe City when compared to the rest of Victoria. It was reported in the Australian Early Development Census in 2021 that 25% of children in Latrobe City were reported to be developmentally vulnerable or at-risk in the literacy language domain.

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a community- based, early literacy intervention that sends a book each month to the home of a child in the local community, with an accompanying family “tip sheet” which helps families engage with the book in ways that drive language development and early literacy.

This program is delivered at no cost to the families. To deliver this program, the Latrobe Health Assembly partnered with United Way Australia, who has been delivering the Imagination Library in Australia since 2014. The Latrobe Valley Imagination Library delivers monthly books and tip sheets to eligible children until the age of three. To be eligible, the child must live in the Latrobe Valley and be born between 1st January 2023 and 30th June 2024. Those eligible can register here.

As of December 2024, the Latrobe Valley Imagination Library has delivered 7,190 free books to 736 local children and their families.

We asked participating families about their experience and they said:

“If it wasn’t for the program, I probably wouldn’t even read to my kids as much as I do, and they wouldn’t have this many variety of books to be interested in.” 

 

 

“This has been such a wonderful initiative and we are very grateful to be a part of it. We love getting the surprise of a new book in the mail, and reading it together. Please don’t stop this!”

 

“I think this is such a great program for children. My bub is only so young but it makes me excited to receive new books to read to her… Reading is so important for young minds and something that is highly valued in my household, Imagination Library makes it easy to keep expanding my daughter’s library.”

 

“We already read often to our son so this did not change however as a family on a tight budget it meant providing more variety to our son’s library each month.”

 

“Thank you for a wonderful program not only does my daughter enjoy the new books, her older siblings really enjoy reading them as well and showing their excitement and joy with their baby sister too.”