Reading with young children (0-5 years) needs to be promoted to families and all members of the community as a fun and integral part of a child's daily routine. In your professional role you have the opportunity to engage with families to enable this practice to become part of the culture of family life and support the development of 'emergent literacy skills' in children prior to the commencement of formal education.

The following material has been extracted from a literature review that has been undertaken by the Centre for Community Child Health in partnership with The Smith Family and made possible with funding from the Telstra Foundation. This literature review focussed on how literacy skills are best acquired and therefore determined the key features of the program (which will henceforth be known as Let's Read) to promote reading to young children in order to encourage the skills that will increase their chances of learning to read and write successfully later in life.