The biggest challenge in family literacy is to encourage children, parents and seniors that it is an important life skill that requires early childhood learning and continuous reinforcement throughout the adult years. Literacy learning takes place at school and in a home environment. When literacy becomes a family focused process, the whole family benefits. Together grandparents, parents and teachers influence a child's attitude towards literacy and learning.
Literacy is the ability to read, write, calculate, speak and understand.
Many literacy skills are necessary for functioning in school, everyday life, in the workforce and the community. It is fundamental in decision making, information processing, critical thinking, technical and computer literacy, quantitative literacy, scientific literacy, visual arts literacy and media literacy. Lower literacy skills are found in a significant proportion of the general adult population in all the countries surveyed. Level 3 is regarded by many experts as a minimum for coping with the complex demands of everyday life and Level 5 shows the highest level of literacy skills. Another 50 million adults were on the brink of illiteracy.