This section will help you to understand and develop the core skills that will lead to increased confidence and experience in working with young people. By working through the Core Skills area, you will be able to:

Identify the main skills needed for working with young readers

Build those skills for yourself and/or help your colleagues develop their skills

Learn and share ideas for opening up reading for young people

The Core Skills presented in this section have been developed in consultation with library practitioners. All staff working with young people in HeadSpace will need most if not all of these skills. It is a good idea to get staff teams to work through the core skills section together so they can offer support to each other and identify where further training is needed.

Click on the headings and links below to work through each section. Please remember to use the 'back button' on your web browser to return to this page at any point.

Use the core skills questionaire to identify where further training or support for core skills is needed.

Work through the TRF core skills scenarios to learn more about applying core skills to your work with children and young people.

Learn more from TRF about Making the Library Welcoming

Find out about helping young readers to develop

Look at the core values of youth work (Word, 288kb) and think about how you will apply them to your work with young people.