Life Story Work with Children Who are Fostered or Adopted

This book is an excellent, practical, way of getting started on the complex but vital task of providing life story work for looked after children...They provide activities that can be used withchildren to help them come to an understanding of why they are in care... Perhaps most valuable is that the authors set life story work in a context, with chapters devoted to helping the child build a sense of safety, emotional literacy, resilience and identity as an integral part of sharing the information about their life with them... This is an excellent book and the exercises described have uses in working with and caring for children beyond the life story work field. -- Foster Care Magazine The authors have thoughtfully sifted and collated the numerous different activities and methodology that have worked well in practice as a way of encouraging practitioners, foster carers and adoptive parents to begin doing life story work with children. In so doing, they allow those three groups in a child's life - practitioners, foster carers and adoptive parents - to do direct work with children and give them an opportunity to explore their own creative and communication skills. -- Young Minds Magazine It is an ideal resource for those who undertake direct work with children and provides very imaginative and useful practical exercises to carry out with children in the course of doing life story work with them. The book has a very clear structure...is well referenced and evidence-based and shows comprehensively why life story work is so important to children in care... the exercises... equally applicable to other forms of direct work with children, such as for children's guardians, children's social workers and residential social workers... This book brings together a variety of very stimulating and creative ideas... for those who like to work imaginatively therapeutically and creatively with children. -- Julia Isikwe Hughes, independent social worker and integrative psychotherapist * Seen and Heard * The book is easily readable, written in a heartfelt way by people who a) clearly care deeply about the subject matter and b) have real and robust experience in carrying out Life Story Work themselves... This book is split into bite-size chunks that give real and concrete activities split into what the facilitator will need, how to complete the activity and 'handy hints' about how to develop or shape the work to fit with the developmental stage of the child... It was really useful to have read this book and would recommend it as a useful addition to material for those working in this vital area. -- Clinical Nurse Specialist