What is narrative practice and why is it important? A new briefing explores narrative approaches in direct work with children, young people, families and adults.
Practitioners play an important role in supporting individuals to reflect on their personal histories and looking towards a future where they are empowered and enabled to flourish. Narrative practice is the strengths-based assumption that children and adults of all ages are experts in their own lives.
Central to this approach is exploring the stories and language a person uses to describe themselves and the difficulties they are facing, using externalising questions to reshape these narratives to focus on positive events and experiences.
The briefing introduces the ethos and principles underpinning narrative practice and outlines useful skills and techniques. The resource draws on research, theory and practice experience and includes an illustrative case study.
Using narrative practice in direct work with children, families, and adults
This briefing aims to support practitioners to use narrative practice in direct work with children, families, and adults.
By embedding a narrative approach practitioners can support individuals to reclaim the authority to author their own stories and to speak from a position of lived experience and knowledge, rather than as a subject of assessment and intervention.
Supporting a narrative approach with children, young people, families and adults
Narrative practice draws on and shares principles with other well-established approaches in social care including strengths-based and trauma-informed practice, identity development, and attachment perspective.
These resources can be used to inform and support a narrative approach with children, families and adults.
A series of videos aims to support children’s social care practitioners working with parents who have experienced complex and/or sustained trauma.
This tool provides guidance about how practitioners can explore and write about identity with children and young people.
This briefing provides an introduction to trauma-informed approaches, supporting practitioners to better understand how complex trauma affects people.
This series of podcasts introduces and reflects on the theories that underpin strengths-based approaches with adults.
Using narrative practice in direct work with children, families, and adults: Frontline Briefing (2024)
Narrative practice offers a culturally sensitive orientation to work with children, families and adults, that supports an anti-racist, anti-oppressive and socially just practice approach. This briefing introduces the ethos and principles of narrative practice and outlines techniques for direct work.
Working with trauma-experienced parents in children’s social care: Video Learning Resources
This learning programme has been developed to support children’s social care practitioners working with parents who have experienced complex and/or sustained trauma. The programme is made up of 11 film chapters – each exploring a different theme and designed to be worked through in order. As you work through each chapter you will learn more about how trauma affects the people you work with.
Understanding, exploring and supporting children’s identity development: Practice Tool (2023)
This practice tool provides guidance about how practitioners can explore and write about identity with children and young people. It includes tips and practical tools, drawn from practice experience and research evidence.
Embedding trauma-informed approaches in adult social care: Frontline Briefing (2019)
We are all impacted by our past experiences, which can have a lasting effect on the way we view and experience the world. This Frontline Briefing will develop the capacity of practitioners to understand how complex trauma affects people. Practitioners reading this publication will build their confidence in applying trauma-informed approaches in their work with people across the life course.
Strengths-based conversations
This series of podcasts introduces and reflects on the theories that underpin strengths-based approaches.