The Evaluation of a Staff-Led Early Literacy Intervention at Six WIC Clinics

• In Event: Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Topic - Prevention and Interventions

Abstract

Children from low-income backgrounds often start school with more limited literacy skills than their peers from more affluent backgrounds (Ryan et al., 2006). Without intervention, these group-based differences in skills could increase as children go through school (Aikens & Barbarin, 2008). The positive impact of the home environment on children’s early literacy skills is well established, notably the importance of children’s exposure to environmental print, opportunities to engage with literacy artifacts, and interactions with language/literacy role models (Farver et al., 2013; Niklas & Schneider, 2013). Taken together, existing research supports the need for early literacy intervention and the evaluation of such efforts.
The current study was an evaluation of an early literacy intervention, which took place in six Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) clinics in early 2020. The intervention included WIC staff members conversing individually with parents about the importance of talking, singing, and reading with one’s infant or child. During the conversation staff also distributed a toolkit with literacy materials (listed in Figure 1) to parents (N=233). Before and after the staff-led intervention (Time 1), parents were asked about their knowledge of the importance of talking, reading, singing, and talking about healthy eating with their children (Table 1). Parents also reported how frequently they engaged in literacy activities with their children. Data collection for Time 1 stopped in early March 2020 due to COVID-19. Parents who participated in Time 1 were contacted again between May and July (Time 2; N=158), a few months after they had received the intervention. They were asked about the toolkit and their literacy engagement with their children.
Significantly more parents reported knowing a lot about the importance of talking, singing, reading, and talking about healthy eating after the intervention (Table 1). Many of the parents contacted at Time 2 reported engaging in literacy activities more since their conversation with staff: 95% of parents reported talking more with their children, 90% read more, and 89% sang more. Most parents at Time 2 also reported using the items included in the toolkit and found the items useful (Figure 1). In addition, parents expressed wanting to receive more books and educational resources when asked about which resources they might need during the current crisis.
Parents’ reported knowledge about the importance of literacy-related activities and their engagement in literacy-related activities increased after the intervention. It is important to note, however, that this evaluation took place, in part, during a public health crisis. As such, despite parents reportedly engaging in literacy-related activities more at Time 2, we cannot conclusively state whether the intervention alone was responsible for this increase. However, parents’ knowledge may have informed the activities they chose to engage in with their children and their receipt of the toolkit materials could have enabled such activities to take place. These findings suggest providing parents with literacy materials and leveraging trusted messengers (e.g., WIC staff; Mahoney et al., 2020) to discuss the importance of literacy are promising methods to promote children’s early literacy exposure.

Authors

• Brittany Gay, University of Maryland - Baltimore County
  Presenting Author

• Susan Sonnenschein, University of Maryland - Baltimore County
  Non-Presenting Author

• Megan Theresa Rowan, University of Maryland - Baltimore County
  Non-Presenting Author