Life Story Work

Therapeutic life story work

Therapeutic Life Story Work offers children opportunity to explore, question and understand past events of their life. 

The process enables the child to have child  a voice and safe space to feel and express their emotions when making sense of past experiences and the relation it has to their current thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

How it works

Typically therapeutic Life Story Work has 3 stages:

1. The Information Bank: The therapist collates an array of information from Social Work files, interviews and physical evidence. They then consider how the child views their world and what their attachment issues may be. 

2. Internalisation: The child is encouraged to externalise their thoughts, feelings and emotions and this is what is explored and recorded. This is always carried out alongside the primary carer and can take approximately 18 sessions.

3. The Life Story Book: Contains the information recorded during the process, information  which has been internalised by the child. It is up to the child to decide what is included as a representation for others to see