A new suite of Research in Practice resources aim to help practitioners support care-experienced children and young people to understand their own history and life story.
Life story work is an essential social work task and aims to answer the questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? Why did I not grow up with my birth mother or father?
It brings together the child’s lived experiences, thoughts, feelings and questions, with memories of birth family and others and the social worker’s understanding of what happened and how decisions were made.
A new Practice Tool focuses on how social workers, and others supporting care experienced children and young people can help them to understand their own histories through planned direct work and writing life story books. It includes sections on:
-
What is life story work and why does it matter?
-
Overcoming the challenges of life story work.
-
Doing life story work with children and writing the story down.
Additionally, there are a series of short videos giving examples of how social workers can approach life story work with care experienced children and young people, as well as a series of example life story books and other written resources.
Research in Practice resources to support life story work
We have brought together a range of resources designed for practitioners to support care-experienced children and young people to create a coherent narrative that makes sense of the past, present and future.
This Practice Tool is designed to help practitioners support care experienced children and young people to understand their own history and life story.
The videos provide examples of life story work. They were created by Polly Baynes for Research in Practice using child actors.
These are written examples of life story books, later life letters, and talking about alcohol, drugs and prison to children.
This webinar provides a brief introduction into the key elements of life story work with children and what the research tells us about why it matters. It considers which children need the work and when it should be done.
Clarify what life story work is, which children need it and what the research tells us. This webinar considers a number of models of delivery and where responsibility for the work lies. It highlights the support practitioners need to carry out the work and how quality might be assessed.
Lizzie Hills, Practice Lead at Norfolk County Council, talks about Norfolk County Council’s approach to life story work and the importance of making sure that children’s life stories, and how they understand them, is at the centre of all direct work with them.
Supporting separated children and young people seeking asylum
This workshop will explore how social care practitioners can support separated children seeking asylum.
Learning from the Pre-birth Change Project
This webinar shares learning from the Pre-birth Change Project and launches new resources with ten key messages to guide and inform practice.
Case law and legal summary special edition: Contact after adoption
This edition has a special focus on post-adoption contact. It reviews two recent cases which adopted novel approaches to post-adoption contact, and a report published by the judiciary's website, of a working group on adoption.