Intergenerational Family Literacy: Working Together

This paper brings intergenerational family literacy programs to the attention of both an education and a social welfare readership. It describes how they benefit both children of parents with unmet literacy needs and the parents themselves. The paper presents results, from a Department of Employment. Education and Training national study, which show an important overlap between adult literacy teachers and family support workers in their interests in their clients, and argues for the need for cross‐sectoral cooperation. Australian examples of such cooperation are provided and a scheme is proposed linking a number of government agencies to provide intergenerational family literacy programs offering a suite of needed services.