Life Story Work Guidance

Every looked after child who has a permanency plan aside from a return to residing to their birth parents should have life story work undertaken. It is a therapeutic process:

• To give details and understanding of the child's history;
• To build a sense of identity;
• To enable the child to share their past with others;
• To give a realistic account of early events and dispel fantasies about their birth family;
• To link the past to the present and to help both the child and adopter to understand how earlier life events continue to impact on behaviour;
• To acknowledge issues of separation and loss;
• To enable adoptive parents/carers to understand and develop empathy for the child;
• To enhance the child's self-esteem and self-worth;
• To help the child to develop a sense of security and permanency;
• To promote attunement and attachment.
  
  Taken from Joy Rees, 2009.

Life Story work should follow the 6 key steps outlined below to work with the child and their family/carers to support and deal with the child's inner world and promote the recovery process (Wrench and Naylor, 2013):

• Building a sense of safety: This means beginning the life story work by helping the child regulate and lower arousal levels. Once improvements are made in this area then it is possible to move towards using more creative interventions. Often the carer/s need to be involved in this as they can learn to help the child regulate – it brings containment and a sense of safety through their relationships;
• Building emotional literacy: It is important to establish whether the child has words for feelings and can match them to events. It is important to establish that it is safe to talk about the good and the bad feelings;
  Building Resilience and self-esteem: Celebrating the strengths and achievements of the child and showing high expectations for them. Showing and providing evidence of their strengths and the importance of their relationship with their carer who will provide the safe base from to explore their life story;
• Building a sense of identity: Identity is who the child believes themselves to be, based on their experiences, their interpretation of those experiences, and the reactions of others to them and of the significant adults with whom the child identifies. As a result of experiences in their birth families and the care system, looked after children often have a negative sense of self and damaged sense of belonging. This will focus on identity in the past and in the future, promoting a positive sense of self;
• Information sharing and integration: This is a process of information- sharing through which the child develops an understanding of their life history and that they are not responsible for the trauma they have experienced. As the child begins to have a clearer understanding of the past, present and future and a clearer understanding of their position in the world;
• Looking to the future: This is a celebration of the child, packed with hope and optimism for the future. It is about reinforcing their position in their current placement or adoptive family – 'a passport to the future'. The child's carer/parent should also have a clearer understanding of the child's history and what to expect from behaviour, which should help stabilise the placement. The child should have less guilt about what happened in the past and a stronger sense that they are deserving of love and care.

Life story work should be completed by a social worker or family support worker.

It is important to consider the robustness of the care construct (those around the child) and work to ensure they are robust enough to support the child through the life history process. The team around the child should hold an initial meeting to plan the work around the child and this should be recorded as a case discussion on LCS, this should conclude with a clear plan and actions. The progress of the work should be monitored through supervision on a regular basis. The Child Care Review should also monitor the progress of the work.

All life story books will be authorised by a team manager.

The life story book is a coherent, narrative of the child's story and will start with the present, moving to the past and end with the future:

• Present: Concentrates on facilitating stronger attachments to carers, reinforcing a sense of security and permanency;
• Past: History to be contained in the middle which is symbolically significant;
• Future: A bright positive future.

Clear messages of permanency, love, trust and belonging should be threaded through every book.

The Life Story Book should always be written in third person.

All books should be initially put together in draft form. Where the plan is adoption the social worker/family support worker should spend time within the adoptive family in the early stages/introduction period discussing the book and collating information to include within the present and future.

Life story work can have a profound impact on parents/carers, just as it does on the child. The empathy and understanding that can emerge throughout the journey cannot be underestimated. Parents should be engaged in the work, enabled to understand the process and contribute fully to the work.

The foster carers/adopters need to be engaged at the earliest opportunity and a shared ownership is developed. The book must be shared initially in draft form. It is important to remember that processing of information does not just happen within the sessions, it happens throughout. Dependant on the work carers/adopters may need to be involved in direct work sessions and the sharing of information therefore need to be supported in this.

The life story work should be completed at the pace of the child, timescales should be clearly identified and monitored closely by the allocated worker, manager and independent reviewing officer. Where a child is placed within an adoptive placement the life story book should be finalised and given to adoptive parents by the second review, by this time the adoptive carers should have a good understanding of the book and agreed the content.

Life Story Work with Children who are Fostered or Adopted, Creative Ideas and Activities, Katie Wrench and Lesley Naylor.

Website: www.thejoyoflifework.com