How creative life story work puts care experienced children in control

By Jo Stephenson

Life story work can play a key role in helping care experienced children and young people understand their family background and how they came into care.

“Ultimately it contributes to their sense of identity, which is absolutely critical,” says CoramBAAF adoption consultant Jane Poore.

“It’s a grounding in who they are and where they came from, and if they don’t have that information they will either seek it out themselves – possibly putting themselves at risk – or internalise it and have various problems because of their lack of ownership and sense of who they are.”

High-quality life story work can help improve placement stability and relationships with family members and reduce mental health difficulties, says clinician and practice researcher at Royal Holloway University Laura Hanbury.

Life story work ‘shouldn’t just be a book’

But a lack of research, standards and training, on top of time pressures and high turnover of children’s social workers, means the quality varies widely.

“It shouldn’t just be a book and it’s not a piece of work that is ever completed, in my opinion,” says Hanbury.

Meanwhile practice – which often involves a one-off piece of work to create a paper-based life story book – has failed to keep pace with advances in the use of technology and improved understanding of trauma.

“With all the trauma-informed training that is out there, we haven’t seemed to be able to connect the importance of life story work within that,” adds Hanbury.

“We know that trauma manifests more when there is a lack of comfort, a lack of protection, a lack of context and understanding around certain types of experiences some young people might have. Yet we don’t link that to the importance of life story work and putting meaning and adding context to those experiences – sort of connecting the dots.”

However, researchers and practitioners are devising new ways to deliver life story work and improve outcomes for children and young people.

Creative activities

The All About Me packs. Photo: Blue Cabin

Charity Blue Cabin is exploring how creative activities, from painting to puppetry, can be used as part of life story work, through its All About Me Creative Experience – a six-week programme facilitated by artists trained in trauma recovery and attachment.

Aimed at care experienced children and young people aged five to 17, it sees a “pastoral support worker” – usually a local authority staff member, such as a social worker – working alongside the artist to run weekly sessions exploring themes such as “people in my life” or “places I have lived”.

These are delivered face-to-face or online to groups of up to six children and young people, supported by a trusted adult, such as a foster carer.

“Unlike traditional life story work, the focus is the creative activity as opposed to, ‘Let’s talk about your life,’” explains Blue Cabin director Jenny Young.

Photo: Blue Cabin

“By exploring a theme, such as who is important in a child’s life, you start to find out about them and their needs, but it’s on their terms and builds on things they want to know about.”

Research findings

A trial at three local authorities in north east England found most staff who tested the approach felt it was more effective than traditional life story work and had improved children’s wellbeing.

Of about 60 staff and foster carers who took part, 78% felt it had improved placement stability to some degree and the vast majority – 93% – believed it had had a positive impact on relationships between children and parents or carers.

However, the evaluation as a whole found no statistically significant difference in wellbeing, placement stability or school stability between children offered and not offered the intervention

Sharing learning

Blue Cabin has also recently launched the Creative Life Story Work online platform, to share good practice and support social workers to deliver creative life story work activities themselves.

“We have bottled up those creative sessions into bite-sized activities social workers can use as part of life story work practice every day,” says Young, who hopes it will go some way to filling gaps in training and guidance.

Darlington Borough Council trialled the All About Me creative experience and has since signed up to the membership scheme.

Therapeutic social worker Charlotte Swainston, who is leading work to embed high-quality life story work across the authority, says creative activities provide a fresh and effective way of reaching children and young people.

“Children and young people have often had many different social workers as part of their journey and what we hear from them is, ‘Here’s another one who is going to get the three houses out and ask the same questions,” she says. ‘Three houses’ is a commonly used direct work tool.

“This is different; it’s not a standardised approach and gives professionals the opportunity to put their own creative spin on things, so children don’t feel it is the same thing over and over again.”

Using objects

CoramBAAF’s Objects and their Stories course helps social workers and foster carers understand how both precious and everyday items can be used to help communicate and build relationships with children and young people generally and as part of life story work.

“Young people often have objects from their birth parents or foster placements and this is about using those objects to bring stories out,” explains course trainer Karey Taylor, independent visitor co-ordinator and an advocate for the Leaving Care with Confidence project.

“’This is the bunny I won at the fair with that foster carer’, or, ‘This is the object your birth mum gave you in hospital’ – and the story just flows from there.”

Using objects as the starting point for conversations is a powerful technique that can help social workers in so many situations, including when they first meet a child and are trying to make a connection.

Crucially, the young person is in control of the narrative, says fellow trainer Lisa Handy, relationships, sex and health education programme manager for personal, health, social and economic education provider Coram Life Education.

“Life story work is done with the child but often comes from the adult. This is very much about [putting] the child at the centre of their memories and is completely led by them,” she says.

Digital solutions

Other are innovating in the digital space. Coram-i, the children’s charity’s improvement consultancy, is working with a software development company to create a life story work app for all care experienced young people and is currently seeking local authorities interested in trialling it later this year.

Most young people have access to a vast depository of “digital memories” accessed via their own smartphones or by scrolling through devices belonging to parents or other family members.

But this is often not the case for care experienced children – especially those who have had  multiple placements.

The idea of the app is to enable children to have a safe and secure, but similarly detailed and constantly updated, digital record of key people, activities and events in their life, explains managing director of Coram-i Kevin Yong.

A more vibrant alternative to case records

Unlike case records, which tend to consist of official reports and minutes of meetings – or a traditional life story book – the app would provide a fuller, more vibrant record of a child’s life so far, through photos, videos and even voice messages.

It wouldn’t end with an adoption or permanent care placement, but could continue to grow and be updated with content uploaded by birth family members, foster carers, adoptive parents, social workers and, eventually, the young person themselves.

The content could be used to create timelines and albums and explore relationships.

Importantly – when a child is old enough – they will be able to carry it around with them and access it at pretty much any time, via a smartphone, tablet or laptop.

‘The content is owned by the person in care’

“First and foremost the content will be owned by the person in care and no one can take it away from them,” says Yong. “It is theirs forever.”

He expects the young person’s social worker would also have access to the app and believes it could help them in their day-to-day practice, as well as life story work in particular.

“It should make the job of putting together a life story book a lot easier and also help social workers keep up to date with what’s going on in a young person’s life, so next time they see them, they can have more informed and meaningful conversations,” says Yong.

“Ultimately, it could help with placement stability, behaviour and other issues that stem from the frustration young people feel in not having access to this information.”