Case Study: Welsh Government boosts Welsh language use among parents and children with Claremont

Welsh Government advances million-speaker goal since 2022 with Claremont

The Welsh Government partnered with Claremont to address a key challenge in reaching its goal of one million Welsh speakers. The specific challenge was encouraging parents, who often lacked confidence in their Welsh language skills, to use the language with their children despite their pride in Welsh heritage and support for its use.

Claremont applied behavioural science principles using the EAST framework to develop easy, attractive, social, and timely interventions. These included placing messaging in maternity folders, sharing Welsh music playlists via nurseries, and introducing Welsh-language toys in parent-toddler sessions. Claremont's solution yielded positive results; parents proactively used the Welsh toys, leading to more Welsh utterances, and those less confident reported a "journey of rediscovery" for the language. The work provided good evidence for the effectiveness of music and toys as tools to support parents, and the next focus for Claremont is scaling these tools to reach more families across Wales.

Welsh Government