Life Story Work: Practice Tool (2022)
Introduction
The resources on this page are designed 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. It aims to create a coherent narrative that makes sense of the past, present and future and involves ‘doing’, as well as talking.
On this page you will find:
- Life story work practice tool.
- Videos examples of life story work in action, with child actors.
- Example booklets: life story books, later life letters and talking about alcohol, drugs and prison to children.
Professional Standards
PQS:KSS - Relationships and effective direct work | Communication | Promote and govern excellent practice | Purposeful and effective social work | Developing excellent practitioners
PCF - Intervention and skills | Knowledge
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