Therapeutic life story work aims to help children resolve early trauma and form secure attachments with their adoptive parents and carers.
Therapeutic life story work facilitates carers in supporting their children to make sense of their early care experiences and the accompanying often complex and painful feelings.
Therapeutic life story work addresses developmental trauma and attachment insecurity whilst providing a coherent narrative of their life experiences.
Family Focused are experienced and skilled in working with children and families with attachment difficulties and trauma. This has included undertaking therapeutic life story work. Children with disrupted attachments and care experiences often have a fragmented life history leaving them feeling confused and vulnerable with a fragile sense of belonging.
Therapeutic life story work offers children an opportunity for them to explore their thoughts, feelings and understanding of events that have occurred within a safe environment where they feel heard and enables them to make links to their current functioning and sense of self.
Therapeutic life story work involves the child’s carers who help to gather the information available and explore what will be helpful and safe to share and to discuss how the information is shared and the pace of this for their child. Our therapist supports the carers by thinking about how they would like to respond to questions and feelings the child may experience between sessions.
The life story work provides a chronology of events and context to these experiences at a pace that suites the child. Therapeutic life story work provides the child with a deeper understanding and acceptance of their life history and a more positive and healthy self identity.
As a result of this work the child will be less preoccupied with questions and the not knowing and as a result is calmer and more focused in the here and now. The work provides a personal record of those explorations and discussions as well as facilitates the family in producing a formal life story book, increasing their sense of ownership of their story, that they may wish to share with others.
Their carer being present through this work provides a shared narrative and understanding of each others thoughts, feelings and behaviours enabling the child to experience their carer’s acceptance of the whole of them and so attachments are strengthened. Deeper understanding and stronger attachments increases the likelihood of family stability.
Providing specialist psychological services to children, young people, adults and families across the East Midlands and South Yorkshire, including Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Derby, Derbyshire, Sheffield, Rotherham, Chesterfield and Doncaster.