Work on story sacks over the last few years has similarities with work on involving
             parents in children's reading in the 1970s and '80s, whereby teachers in a large
             number of schools began to send home books for children to share with their
             parents on a regular basis. Apart from a handful of research projects (Hannon,
             1995) only small amounts of this work were evaluated, making it difficult to gather the effectiveness.
             Now we have an initiative, which has been built on the work of a former head teacher. Neil Griffiths came up with the idea of story sacks and has represented his work widely, with the support of the Basic Skills Agency. Griffiths' original intervention was a
             school initiative (Poulson et al., 1997). However, they are widely used now within schools, libraries, factories and other settings all over the country to develop and loan story sacks.
             Although story sacks are becoming a widely used and valuable piece of resource, to date nothing substantial about the work around story sacks themselves has been published and the only documentation publicly available has been in brief reports, e.g. Boots initiative, ROWA! Darlington, Story sack Initiative, Southampton City Libraries, Harlow story sacks project, or short anecdotal accounts.
             Sure Start has since recently put a clear focus on providing the community and families within the community with resources to help in a variety of situations and children's learning. Its main focus is the target on improving children's ability to learn, For example, supporting bonding and enhancing families' opportunities for involvement in the community.
             In establishing the project, emphasis was placed on finding collaborative ways of working with parents and other pre-school providers in the area (local education authority nursery schools, private and voluntary nurseries, playgroups and toddler groups plus Sure Start workers themselves) in order to meet Sure ...