Apart from a minor group whose individual learning needs are recognized for special resourcing, many disadvantaged learners experience difficulties in literacy. Their parents and carers are, potentially, an important source of additional support in encouraging literacy acquisition. In addition, embedded within particular approaches and strategies for developing literacy are a variety of underlying assumptions about the process of literacy acquisition. This paper illustrates these issues with reference to a particular programme currently in use in Literacy Centres in a Land Development Scheme. It will go on to outline the training services given to a group of untrained practitioners leading these centres. This is done in order that they may negotiate effective literacy programmes which can harness all available resources to address difficulties in literacy development. The training focuses on ways to inculcate interaction and collaboration among trainees.