Playtime with Books (PwB) is a digital book-sharing intervention for children aged 10-24 months based on Murray and Cooper’s evidence-based shared picture book intervention, adapted for virtual delivery. The programme aims to promote parental sensitivity and support and reinforce parents’ use of positive book-sharing skills with their young child. It consists of five self-directed online skill sessions and up to three personalised video-feedback support calls provided virtually by practitioners from local early-years services. Facilitators guide parents through the programme, encouraging them to practice new skills and film themselves sharing books with their child. They build a relationship with the parent via a welcome call and have three online calls with the parent to give supportive feedback about their recorded videos.

Our aim was to identify and test improvements to the PwB service so that it works better for delivery partners and families unable to access face-to-face book-sharing programmes. PEDAL, with support from Nesta, delivered PwB in two cycles of delivery across three local authorities. This report shares the analysis and findings from the first cycle of delivery only, as well as interviews and surveys conducted with parents and facilitators.

We wanted to learn about how parents with children aged 10-24 months engaged with PwB. Specifically, how our target group found the programme: parents with a household income of below £25,000, receiving benefits or an educational attainment level of A-level or under. In particular, we were interested in where they would find out about PwB, what would motivate them to sign up, and how they could access the programme.

We were also interested in learning more about the feasibility and acceptability of the platform for parents and facilitators to ensure it could be successfully delivered on a larger scale. For local authorities, we wanted to assess differences in recruitment and delivery eg, how effective different recruitment strategies were in rural compared to urban areas.

The Nesta and PEDAL teams aligned on what elements of the PwB programme would be fixed for the next phase of delivery, and what elements were flexible to potentially be changed in response to feedback. 

Activities undertaken in this project were:

• recruiting three local authorities (Derby city, Shropshire, and Cumberland) to recruit parents and facilitators and deliver the programme
• running workshops and interviews with our local authority partners, parents, and practitioners to gather feedback on the programme and feed into the development of the digital platform
• recruiting parents and facilitators and testing recruitment strategies and channels to see what worked best to reach our target parents
• partnering with Synergy Learning to develop a new digital platform for PwB to develop increased capabilities, moving from Moodle Cloud to Moodle Workplace (learn more below)
• updating the previous facilitator training manual and training sessions
• making improvements and updates to the online book-sharing skills sessions completed by parents
• delivering PwB in three local authorities across two delivery cycles, collecting data on parent demographics and engagement. We initially aimed to deliver the programme to at least 50 parents.

We have now completed our first cycle of delivery and summarise our key findings from cycle one in the following chapters. Our overall findings from both cycles of delivery will be shared in spring 2025.

25 early-years practitioners were identified to be trained in the PwB programme in three local authorities: Derby, Shropshire and Cumberland. They were signed up by our local authority contacts to deliver the programme, with some putting forward names from their own teams/services and others advertising the programme to other services within their local authority.

The majority of facilitators were play or parenting practitioners, all working in early-years services eg, children’s centres, Family Hubs, libraries. 

Of the 25 facilitators trained:

• 21 were allocated families to work with in the study (9 from Derby, 10 from Shropshire and 2 from Cumberland)
• 12 facilitators completed the programme with at least one family (2 from Derby, 8 from Shropshire and 2 from Cumberland).

This strong interest from parents indicates that they felt that the PwB offer is attractive and relevant, and non-stigmatising in its presentation. Of the 93 who expressed interest, 36 parents (38.7%) were from our target group (household income of below £25,000, receiving benefits or having an educational attainment level of A-level or under).

This success in attracting interest from a large number of parents indicates that the recruitment channels we tested (flyers, social media, practitioners in library/community/children’s centre settings) were largely effective. There were variations between the most effective recruitment channels across the three local authorities:

• In Cumberland, social media was the most effective recruitment method, with 16 participants hearing about the programme via this channel.
• In Derby, parents primarily came through practitioners in local community settings (eg, library/children's centre) (n=16).
• In Shropshire, most participants heard about PwB through flyers/posters in a local community setting eg, library/children's centre (n=9).

Among the facilitators recruited and trained in the three local authorities, we had capacity to work with 40 families in cycle one. This number of families was initially allocated to facilitators in their local area (20 in Derby, 15 in Shropshire and 5 in Cumberland), although not all of these parents went on to start the programme.

Of these 40 parents allocated:

• 21 (52.5%) met our target criteria of having a household income of below £25,000, receiving benefits or an educational attainment level of A-level or under. If this remains as a targeted intervention, we would like to work more with service providers in future cycles to identify referral routes to access target parents we think are most likely to benefit.
• For the 29 parents who provided demographic information relating to racial and ethnic backgrounds:
  • 23 parents identified as White British (79.3%)
  • 4 identified as Asian (13.7%)
  • 2 identified as being from another white racial or ethnic background (6.8%). 
• 39 of the parents were female and 1 was male.

Despite initial high interest, many parents dropped out before starting the programme. Once parents started programme content, engagement was higher.

Of the 40 families who were initially allocated to a facilitator:

• 29 (72.5%) completed the baseline assessment (15 in Derby, 10 in Shropshire, 4 in Cumberland)
• 24 went on to have a welcome call with their facilitator (60%)
• 19 completed at least one book-sharing skills session (47.5%). 

This shows that over half of the parents disengaged before starting the content of the programme (reasons shown in Figures 1 and 2).

Once parents had started the programme content (skills session one) engagement was higher, with 13 of the 19 (68.4%) completing at least one check-in call, and 11 (57.9%) ‘completing’ the programme (based on ‘completion’ criteria of three skills sessions and two check-in calls). It is interesting to note that once a parent completed their first check-in call with their facilitator, they were highly likely to continue to upload clips for all three calls (84.6%), (indicating their intention to have all the calls) and likely to go on to complete all three calls (69.2%).

Of the 11 who completed (2 in Derby, 6 in Shropshire and 3 in Cumberland), 3 (27.2%) parents met our target criteria.

Diagrams showing parent engagement throughout the programme for both the skills sessions and video calls will be included in the final report.

Parents disengaged at different times and for different reasons. Their engagement in the Playtime with Books programme may have been lower than we expected for a range of reasons: 

• Administrative burden on the parent: taking part in a research study meant parents had additional steps to complete (such as forms collecting demographic information, pre- and post-surveys, and language measurement), which may have caused some to disengage at the welcome section.
• Administrative burden on the parent: taking part in a research study meant parents had additional steps to complete (such as forms collecting demographic information, pre- and post- surveys, and language measurement), which may have caused some to disengage at the welcome section.
• Changes in parents’ circumstances: this meant they could not commit the required time to the programme.
• Initial interest: this may have been mismatched to the level of commitment required to complete the programme.
• Type of programme: an online version may have been less attractive (or accessible) to some parents compared with an in-person one - though for many parents we speculate that online may be more attractive.

Facilitators delivering PwB in cycle one had recently been trained and were delivering the programme for the first time. In most cases, their participation in this pilot was on top of existing work commitments, which meant that their capacity to focus on the programme was limited. Most facilitators were also not used to delivering a digital programme and were learning how to use the PwB platform for the first time.

Through communication with facilitators and their line managers, as well as during supervision in cycle one, we learnt that facilitator engagement was affected by a number of factors. This mainly included various difficulties with the digital platform, reducing confidence in the programme. 

Facilitators found the platform difficult to navigate and often didn’t know where to go to complete tasks. Some facilitators reported in their feedback that they found the interface confusing and, therefore, found it difficult to complete tasks on the platform, such as booking calls or downloading clips. Facilitators were also unable to track their parents’ progress through the programme, which led to difficulties in following up with parents and, in turn, affected facilitators’ engagement. There was also a finite amount of protected time and capacity generally to deliver the programme alongside facilitators’ already busy workloads. This led to some delays in making contact with their assigned parents who had been assigned to them or struggling to maintain momentum with programme delivery, leading to some parental disengagement. 

There were different experiences in programme delivery across different local authority areas, with some facilitators delivering and completing the programme more easily than in others. This could be due to differences in facilitators’ capacity across the different local authorities and the possibility of them having protected time for delivering the programme within their roles.

In cycle one, we interviewed eight parents who completed the programme and two parents who did not to gather feedback about their experience of Playtime with Books. Parents who took part in the programme enjoyed it and gave positive feedback on the support they received from facilitators. They particularly enjoyed the video-feedback sessions, which involved receiving positive feedback from their facilitators about their recorded clips of sharing books with their child. This helped them to build confidence with their book-sharing skills and helped them to notice new things about their child, such as how much they focused on the book or how much they looked at the parent. These positive experiences led to richer, longer and more regular book-sharing interactions between them and their child and an increased enjoyment of books among children. 

The majority of parents said that this experience helped them to share books differently with their child, compared to their approaches to book sharing before the programme. In particular they allowed their child to lead and follow their interests, a key skill encouraged by facilitators. Parents noticed that this led to their child being more engaged and having increased attention when book sharing. Some parents shared their experience of this approach and how it impacted their child:

Another parent noticed how it felt more enjoyable for her as the adult to share books in this way, compared to reading books before:

Even parents who had more experience of reading with their child felt they learnt something new from the programme. Parent A noticed how this then increased her child’s confidence and enjoyment with books: 

This update reports on findings from only the first cycle of delivery. The final report, sharing findings from both cycles of delivery, will be published in April and will cover:

• Was the programme’s Moodle platform acceptable and feasible for parents and early-years practitioners? Would it be feasible to deliver this at scale using Moodle Workplace? 
• What did parents and facilitators like/dislike about the programme? 
• Which parents stayed engaged and completed the programme through cycles one and two? Are there any patterns that emerged from combined data from both delivery cycles?
• Why did recruitment rates vary between local authorities, and what were the challenges and barriers to recruitment?

Nesta is continuing to work with PEDAL to develop a new, bespoke digital platform for Playtime with Books, responding to our learning from this phase of work about the advantages and disadvantages of the current platform. 

PEDAL is preparing for an implementation study funded by the Nuffield Foundation, beginning in April 2025.