The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation (ALNF) was founded in 1999 to help people in Australia’s most marginalised communities to gain literacy skills.
ALNF has identified a critical gap in service delivery for children and families to meet vital early learning needs, particularly for vulnerable children, many of whom experience language and literacy delays as a result of socio-economic disadvantage.
ALNF’s innovative ‘Early Language & Literacy program’ (EL&L) program focuses on vulnerable young children who demonstrate specific needs in areas of language and literacy development and require targeted support in fostering vital pre-literacy skills, including phonemic awareness, oral language development, vocabulary knowledge, emergent writing, print awareness and early comprehension skills.
ALNF’s EL&L program adopts an approach that incorporates a unique strategy of combined speech pathology and early childhood education that focuses on strengthening foundational language, communication and early literacy skills.
The program seeks to work collaboratively across community, in prior-to-school and school settings, to implement an initiative that is designed to enhance the pre-literacy skill development of children in a developmentally appropriate time frame. Through this additional instruction, children will be better equipped to take advantage of literacy instruction in school.
The principal aim for the Early Language & Literacy program is to close the gap so all children are ready to commence school and are ready to learn, regardless of socio-economic status.
The Bryan Foundation supports this program in Logan.