Social enterprise and registered charity ‘Big Sky Stories’ was founded by Jane Vaughan and Nicky Wright. It runs two businesses in Broken Hill helping provide children, young people and families in far west NSW a place to gather and be inspired through sharing the world of books, storytelling and creative art activities.
One of their initiatives ‘Pay it Forward’ aims to provide children with books by customers buying a book to be gifted to a child who otherwise may not have had an opportunity to own one.Through the generosity of supporters, there are now 178 books to distribute.
Big Sky Stories is excited to be working in partnership with the Allied Health and Integrated Community Services team at Broken Hill Health Service to find homes for these books. Allied health clinicians such as Speech Pathologists and Occupational Therapists work with children and their families to provide therapy toward meeting their developmental goals, and through these relationships have provided access for some of these children to these books.
“Health is the perfect partner as books can also help with many health factors. Research has shown that reading is known to be the single strongest predictor of adult health status. Learning to read is an important childhood milestone, just like learning to walk and talk. When a child struggles with reading, it can effect learning, behaviour, emotions, and even physical health,” said Jane Vaughan.
Ms Vaughan said children’s fine motor skills, visual perception, confidence in speech and fluent reading are all nurtured through sharing books together and relating the stories and themes to our own lives.
“These skills and experiences can create both a foundation for learning throughout life and improved wellbeing,” she said.
Tracy Herlihy, Manager of Dietetics and Speech Pathology at Far West LHD, welcomed the opportunity to help children access the donated books.
“Allied Health clinicians will be able to highlight families that will benefit from this great resource, as well as knowing that the books will also in turn support the children with some of their therapy goals,” said Mrs Herlihy.
Working in partnerships enables us to better improve the health and wellbeing of our far west community,” she said.
Whenever possible, the Allied Health clinicians will enable the child to choose their own book.
This month the Senior Paediatric Occupational Therapist, Charmaine Lowrie and Nicky Wright started paying forward the books to attendees of School Readiness groups held at the Health Service. Children were encouraged to choose their own books from the range that had been donated.
Nicky Wright said there is a difference between interacting with a screen and reading a book for a child and even adults.
“For children it will encourage parent and child interactions and allow for so much more conversation around the topics in the books. We also understand how important it is for children and young people to own their own books and choose what they’d like to read at a given point in time. The Kids and Family Reading Report found that the majority of kids (89%) agree their favourite books are the ones that they have picked out themselves,” she said.
