Member News: Three Months In - TACT’s National Year of Reading

TACT are proud to be a part of the National Year of Reading 2026, which aims to make lasting change to the reading habits of the nation and promote a love of reading in children and young people. Over the past three months, TACT’s dedicated Education Service have worked extremely hard to make this campaign engaging and exciting. This is the story so far…

To connect our fostering households to the campaign, we chose to send monthly internal newsletters called ‘Bookworm Bulletins’. These were key to informing our fostering families about upcoming activities, along with providing resources and recommendations.

Meet the author events
One of the highlights of the first three months of the campaign was the Meet the Author event with Nick Sharratt, illustrator of the famous Story of Tracy Beaker books. This was attended by 12 children and young people as well as their carers and some TACT staff members. The session was lively, engaging, and brought a great deal of joy to the children – who also had very thoughtful and enthusiastic questions which contributed to a fantastic atmosphere.

A foster carer who joined the session with a young person in their care immediately noticed a positive change: “He has loved learning to draw  and sessions like this have been incredible for his development and his confidence. He now loves drawing and is now proud of all his work”.  A particular highlight involved a young person who joined the event remotely from his hospital bed – and enjoyed it so much that their carer’s Supervising Social Worker has arranged online drawing classes for him while he remains in hospital.

Click here to read the full article.

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