‘Life story work is probably my favourite part of my job’

 ‘Life story work is probably my favourite part of the job’

By Fay, Social Worker, Looked After Children

I am a Social Worker in East Sussex County Council’s Looked After Children’s Service (LAC). My team are responsible for working with children who are in the care system; some have no previous care experience and are coming towards the end of proceedings; others are very care-experienced and moving towards leaving care. There may be a plan for adoption, or for the family to be reunified. I have been working with a lot of the same families for more than a year. You need plenty of staying power, and to maintain the belief in the possibility of change for our families. Life story work is probably my favourite part of the job. East Sussex could become one of the leading local authorities in how we do life story work, and I would love to be a part of that.

Recently I worked with a family who have been through an extremely difficult time. I was able to pull together a life story photo book for two siblings, with an age-appropriate story around a recent event that had happened to their parent. The children’s foster carer and school were both involved in terms of how we were going to present this narrative to the children.

I printed and laminated copies of the life story book for the children, their parent, foster carers, school and extended family. There is also a copy on their LCS files, so it will always be there for them to access whenever they want, or if they lose those hard copies.

When the children saw the life story book, one of them became tearful, but it prompted them to ask questions that I could then answer.  So it was a good opportunity for them to be able to feel OK asking me questions about it.

I hope with this life story work that they’ve been able to process these changes at an easier pace, and that they’ve had a clear narrative given to them about what’s happened. It might be that they need specialist therapeutic intervention in future, so this is just a very practical starting point.

Comments from colleagues

Foster Carer talks about reading the life story book with the children:
‘The children found it really difficult, especially one of them… However, it helped them get ready for what to expect during video calls, which began soon after.’

Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO):
‘…what a carefully thought out and sensitive piece of work − I felt very emotional reading it….I would like to highlight [this] excellent piece of work that Fay has completed (a social story book) to help [these] children … Fay, you have obviously given lots of thought and hard work to this!’

Kathy Marriott, Assistant Director, Children’s Services Director:
‘Helping our children and young people make sense of what has happened or is happening in their lives is a critical part of being a connected practitioner.  Your social story book demonstrates your creative and sensitive approach and your absolute child focus. Your practice, alongside many others across the entire service, is what makes East Sussex such an exceptional place to work.’

Fay’s advice for life story work

• Reach out to extended family members. Most are quite willing to help, and are usually the best people to go to for photos and early experiences, which are so important in terms of developing children’s identities.
• Group supervision is great for life story work. It’s useful to discuss real life scenarios with colleagues who are in similar situations, and to help each other with ideas.
• Try to imagine the questions that children might not be confident enough to ask. Life story work is most effective when there is a real depth of empathy and mentalisation. Imagine yourself to be that child, and think what questions would you have?
• Draw on the whole network around the children, and make sure you’re all on the same page in terms of narrative. The same story can be told from many different perspectives, which can be so confusing for young children. It’s important to help them make sense of things.
• Creating life story work takes time and space to think − it’s important to set aside that time. We would love all of our looked-after young people to get to the age of 18 and have less questions. Then they can say “I know what happened, because my social worker has been working with me on this for years”.
• It is important to progress things and find new ways of doing things that work for our families. We need to be creative around how we do things better for our kids and families. Sometimes life story work doesn’t take the form of a tangible object, like a book.