Belfast City Council to look at spending £2,000 on books for child refugees

At its most recent meeting of the People and Communities Committee at City Hall, elected representatives approved a proposal by Alliance Councillor Christine Bower to explore a potential scheme providing books for refugee children living across Belfast.

Councillor Bower said at the meeting: “There are lots of refugee children living across Belfast, and they have limited or no access to literature or reading materials which are in their native language.

“Having access and ownership to these materials can support these children to maintain a good level of literacy in their primary spoken language. There are many benefits for these children to maintain their native language – such as preserving their cultural identity, supporting the maintenance of family relationships, and developing their cognitive ability.

“I have been working quite closely with our officers to develop this idea, and now is the time to put some actual plans in place. Our initial thoughts were to develop a programme whereby children are given some literature in their native language, and council officers deliver reading support programmes with parents and carers to empower them to read with and develop the literacy of their children.

“These will be children that council officers currently work with – there is lots of scope there already. The officers calculate that such a scheme could incur costs of up to £2,000 and would enable Belfast City Council practitioners to work with five different community partners across the city.”

Councillor Bower asked officers to provide a detailed plan to show how this programme would work, with accurate costings to be brought back to the committee next month for a final decision.