As I See It: Charity offers local people the opportunity to improve their reading skills.

Wednesday 24 January 2024

Charity offers local people the opportunity to improve their reading skills.

Reading is a vital part of everyday life and something that many people take for granted, yet it is something with which 2.4million adults in England have difficulty [1].

Read Easy North Staffs, the local branch of a national charity helping adults improve their literacy skills and their lives have added 8 new coaches to their team and are now able to support more people.

The new coaches will join a team of volunteers offering one-to-one support to readers in venues around the city including libraries and community centres. All the sessions delivered by Read Easy North Staffs are provided free of charge.

Team Leader Sue Bell said, “Read Easy North Staffs is so fortunate that so many valued volunteers are able to offer a few hours a week to help someone less fortunate than themselves to develop their reading skills.”

Adding that she urged “any adult struggling with reading to come and join one of our friendly and supportive reading pairs”.

Having difficulty reading is something 1 in 10 adults in Stoke-on-Trent experience, speaking to the Sentinel in 2022 Neil Ginnis, a reading coach for Read Easy North Staffs said that “simple things” like shopping or filling out forms can be problematic if you struggle to read, and that these problems are compounded by essential services increasingly moving online [2].

People who struggle with literacy can experience a range of challenges, including being more likely to be unemployed or in low paid work, and feeling disempowered and socially isolated [3].

Read Easy is a registered charity providing a volunteer led reading coaching scheme for adults in communities across the UK. Readers and coaches meet for two half hour sessions a week and work through phonics-based reading course Turning Pages together.

Speaking about their experiences, readers described how learning to read opened up new opportunities and improved their self-esteem.

Peter said learning to read had been “the best thing” he had ever done and that he now enjoyed writing his own stories and poems [5].

Sarah said she was now able to read bedtime stories to her children and that was “the best feeling in the world” [6].

For media requests please contact:

Adam Colclough

Press officer Read Easy North Staffs

Mobile: 07776432636

Email: colclougha@aol.com

Anyone who wishes to contact Read Easy North Staffs either to join a reading pair or for further information can contact them using the following:

Andrew 07391 962 565

Janice 07437 163034,

or email nsadmin@readeasy.org.uk