Finnish maternity and child health clinics support reading in families

Regular reading aloud can contribute to a child’s development and to the well-being and interaction of the whole family. Nursery rhymes, reading and exploring books together brings joy to everyday life and supports the child’s language and speech development.

Reading together can be the best part of the day for a child and parent, and reading is the best way to balance time spent with screens. Excessive screen time, on the other hand, can interfere with a child’s language development, especially if the child spends a lot of time alone in front of the screen.

Maternity and child health clinics are free of charge and easy to reach for families in every municipality in Finland. Their services are widely used and accepted regardless of social class: 99,4 % of families in Finland use these services. Maternity and child health clinics are an effective way to reach all families to tell them about the importance of reading.

Guides for childcare professionals and parents

The Finnish Reading Center has published a Read Aloud guide for health professionals, which provides concise information on reading and literacy and concrete advice on how to support families in reading. The Read Aloud guide for professionals is available in Finnish and Swedish.

Available in 17 languages in addition to Finnish and Swedish, the Read Aloud guide for parents helps to raise awareness of the importance of reading for parents. The guide also supports reading in multilingual families and includes information on the importance of one’s first language for literacy in all languages.

Read Aloud Guide for Professionals

Read Aloud Guide for Parents in 17 languages

A book gift ignites the joy of reading

In the Finnish Reading Center’s Book Bag to Every Baby program, a book bag is given to baby families at a child health check-up. The bag contains a book of nursery rhymes for babies and a bedtime story collection for toddlers. The bag also contains an invitation to visit the public library, and a fun growth chart with information on language development at different stages in a child’s life.

The book gift program continues for the sixth year, and clinics can order bags to be distributed free of charge. 63 % of families who have received a book bag say they read more now than before.

Read more about the Book Bag to Every Baby program: luelapselle.fi/read-aloud