Life Story Work – What is it and why is it important?

Fostering is not just about providing a home for the children we care for. It’s also about creating a nurturing environment where they can heal, grow, and thrive. One powerful tool in achieving this is undertaking Life Story Work with a child.

Our dedicated colleagues in the Children We Care For team explain how Life Story Work helps children make sense of their past experiences, to help support their future development.

What is Life Story Work?

Life Story Work is a collaborative process involving the child, their Foster Carers and Social Workers.

Research in Practice describes Life Story Work as a way of:

• explaining the past
• answering questions
• helping children and young people make sense of their own lives.

Life Story Work can be anything that is undertaken to support a child to understand their life story and journey through care. Many people will contribute to this work including their birth family and other people who have touched the child’s life such as previous carers, teachers and friends. Social workers can use direct work, play, stories and many more creative opportunities, to support a child to explore their past, learn more about their family and what has happened for them and to process this.

A Life Story Book provides the child with a visual record of their past and their journey to their current home. It chronicles important milestones, memories, and relationships in a child’s life as well as explaining what has happened and why. This helps a child understand who they are, providing an anchor during times of upheaval and change.

Why is it important for children and young people?

Life Story Work is essential for children who grow up outside of their birth family. Most children can get an understanding of their background and their identity through family conversations and photo albums. For children who no longer live with their birth family, there are greater barriers to accessing this information and therefore they can be more unanswered questions. These children have often experienced traumatic events and loss. These events are emotionally complex and can be hard to understand, which can impact the child’s sense of personal identity.

A practical example of Life Story Work between a Foster Carer and Social Worker, is where they both worked together to help a young child with their planned onwards transition and created a visual poster with a pathway to the home. The child’s photo was moved along the path leading up to the day the child moved. The carer and Social Worker felt this made a big difference for the child and helped them understand what was happening for them as well as played a part in preparing her for this big change.  

The benefits of Life Story Work:

• Better sense of identity and belonging. By understanding their life story, children can develop a strong sense of identity. This helps build self-esteem and provides a sense of continuity.
• Healing from trauma. Life story work sessions offer a safe space for the child to process their experiences. It helps them make sense of emotions to begin the healing process.
• Empowerment and agency. It helps them to take ownership of their narrative and shape their own identity.
• Builds trust and connection. The open communication and increased understanding for both the child and carer strengthens the bond between them.

Children we care for said that Life Story Work:

“Helps set everything straight in my head and now I can think ‘this thing happened, and then this’, and now I know it all in order”. 

“It can be good because you can be happy, as now you know who your actual family is”.

Life Story Work in West Sussex

Fostering West Sussex recognises the importance of a child understanding our involvement. We see Life Story Work as a thread which runs through all stages of their journey. We are developing training and a toolkit of activities and resources to help children understand:

• What is happening to them right now
• Decision-making now or in the past
• What things mean to them and their emotions
• More about their own history and heritage; and
• If not living with their birth family, the reasons why they were separated.

Some tools we use to explore and understand a child’s life story include:

• Play (a child first language)
• Getting to know you games
• Timelines
• Family trees (or creative variations of this)
• Puppets and role play
• Sharing therapeutic stories.

We used examples of the above with a 5-year-old child who didn’t understand the reasons they were living in a foster family and therefore wanted to see and return to the birth parents. Over several months, Life Story Work was planned and undertaken by the Social Worker in conjunction with the Foster Carers. The carers had a key role in advocating for the child given their understanding of the child’s questions and needs. The carers helped shape what information was prioritised first and how this was shared with the child. A short story was created to support the child to know more about their birth parents, to understand the worries that lead to them moving to their foster family and the steps along the way, including the court progress. This personalised story was able to be revisited and help to validate feelings and gave reassurance to the child. It also paved the way for keeping in touch plans to be resumed with the birth parents. The carers’ work in the background reinforcing the agreed narratives, deepening the child’s understanding and further building their emotional literacy was integral to helping the child process these messages.

Further sessions took place exploring feelings, how different families are made up, and promoting the child’s identity and sense of belonging in their foster family through joint sessions with carers, Social Worker, and child. Activities such as identifying their individual and family strengths, creating a family crest and family tree was used and displayed. The ongoing follow up by the carers to unpick and answer more questions outside of the sessions again remained fundamental. The child got to learn they would become part of this family and this security enable them to put down roots. The carers recognised and celebrated the birth family as important aspects of the child’s identity and even connected with a birth sibling who they will have ongoing meet ups with.

From the child’s view, they’ve reported to have ‘no more questions’…well for now at least! The family are amazed at what the child has been able to learn and process with their ongoing support. The Social Worker feels positive and reassured that the child has no more big questions or truths to learn at this time, and confident that the carers are better prepared to approach those that may come in the future.

Life Story Work can have a significant and profound impact on the lives of the children we care for. It helps children to make sense of their past, heal from trauma and build positive connections. Very importantly, this then frees the child from focusing on the past and enables them to be in the present and look towards their future.