Children & young people

Poor outcomes and life chances for children and young people are associated strongly with social disadvantage, and we endeavour to provide services to help break such cycles.

We work to engage and inspire children and young people across Fife, recognising that attainment levels, literacy and aspirations are the bedrock of enabling young people to realise their potential. Our services adopt a universal early-intervention approach to try and reach a wide spectrum of the population.

Cool Creatures

BookBug

Edinburgh International Book Festival, Rothes Halls

Reimagination, Rothes Halls

Book Week Scotland

Harry Potter Book Night

Big Book Brains Quiz

Now in its 11^th year, our Big Book Brains Quiz saw 126 Schools and over 4,000 P6 pupils take part. They were challenged to read five books each – over 20,000 books between them. This is a 3% increase in school participation from last year’s quiz. Over more than a decade, the Big Book Brains Quiz has reached over 21,000 children. Well done to 2019’s winners from Ladybank Primary School!

Book and film

Using emotionally powerful films adapted from great books is a compelling way to engage children with reading. Exploring themes of empathy and understanding through fiction saw us offer special screenings of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, War Horse and Wonder. This year’s events attracted an audience of over 1,100 pupils and teachers, and were a profitable addition to our schools programme.

We sang, rhymed, played and read

Our Bookbug sessions are about sharing stories, songs and rhymes with babies and young children, which has many benefits, including supporting children’s language development, learning and social skills. Once again we sang, rhymed, played and read with families, delivering an impressive 1,222 sessions to 12,028 children and, just as importantly, to 10,978 adults. We brought Therapets along on our Bookbug Buggy Walks and, in partnership with NHS Fife, we offered facilities to host a Read and a Feed breastfeeding support group at Duloch Library. Our strong partnership with Fife’s Education Service also continued, and we trained around 80 new Bookbug session leaders.

Harry Potter

Harry Potter Book Night continued to attract great audiences to libraries and other Trust venues across Fife. In February, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry gave us the opportunity for a week-long celebration, working once more with some wonderful Cool Creatures events.

We held 10 events in total, six of which sold out. One was also a free drop-in event, so with something to suit all pockets we attracted 354 children and 197 adults overall and generated a healthy profit.

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Holiday activities

Our children’s holiday activities continue to draw in a crowd within 29 of our libraries and throughout all seven areas of Fife. Over 1000 children attended our Easter, October and Christmas events

Scottish Child Abuse Enquiry

Finally, not everything we do to support children is visible. An area of work which was important but, of necessity, went largely unseen was the support given to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. We searched and copied Fife Council records that might be relevant to the Inquiry’s investigation into child migrants and into the former Ovenstone Residential School near Pittenweem.