
97% of young people would recommend their Reading Well book to a friend
Reading Well supports you to understand and manage your health and wellbeing using helpful reading.
Reading Well books are all recommended by health experts, as well as people with lived experience of the conditions and topics covered and their relatives and carers.
You can be recommended a title by a health professional, or you can visit your local library and take a book out yourself.
You can borrow books from the collections from your local library. Many of the Reading Well titles are also available to borrow as e-books and audiobooks. Reading Well is a shared programme with Libraries Connected as part of the Universal Public Library Health and Wellbeing Offer.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) has funded a universal roll-out of the reading lists to support mental health to every library service across England. Welsh Government have funded every library authority in Wales to deliver the scheme bilingually in Welsh and English.
Reading Well is delivered by The Reading Agency in partnership with Libraries Connected as a core delivery partner for their Universal Public Library Health and Wellbeing Offer.
It is funded by Arts Council England, The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport and Welsh Government.
Reading Well is evaluated each year to ensure that it delivers positive outcomes.
Over 4.3 million Reading Well books have been borrowed from libraries and 92% of people surveyed found their book helpful.
97% of young people would recommend their Reading Well book to a friend
90% of health professionals surveyed said Reading Well books helped support people outside of consultation time
Reading Well is part of the Universal Public Library Health and Wellbeing Offer. Download our delivery model for a guide to running Reading Well in your library.
You can also download specialist guides for other settings interested in getting involved with Reading Well: Schools, Parents and carers, Link workers and the health sector.
Other print materials supporting Reading Well, including user leaflets and posters, can be ordered from our online shop.
For more information, please get in touch.
We have lots of free downloadable resources to support you with promoting and embedding Reading Well.
A spreadsheet containing the ISBNs and format availability of all Reading Well booklists. This document includes Welsh language books.
A promotional toolkit for the Reading Well for families scheme. It contains background information about the scheme; display and activity ideas; template copy for online…
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A promotional toolkit for the Darllen yn Well i deuluoedd/ Reading Well for families scheme in Wales. It contains background information about the scheme; display…
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A digital version of the user leaflet for Reading Well for families. The leaflet provides information about how the scheme works, resources available in your…
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Reading Well for families recommends helpful reading to support parents and carers to look after their wellbeing in pregnancy and the…
As part of the Reading Well Community Champions pilot, Lancashire Libraries partnered with local poet Nathan Parker to deliver creative…
Royal Star & Garter recently made the Reading Well for dementia book collection available in their Solihull care home, using…
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