Loving families for orphans in Thailand

Earlier this month in the Guardian, the vital role of “Life Story” Work was highlighted and championed in an article you can read here. Tim Taylor, Care for Children Group Training Manager, shares why Life Story work is so important to Care for Children’s model, how it can positively impact the lives of looked-after children, and how you could explore its benefits if you care for foster or adopted children.

Every child or young person is unique with a “life story” belonging to them.

However, children and young people who are placed in foster-care care or adopted may have little understanding of why they don’t live with their birth parents, the reasons for them entering care, and events that took place in their early lives. This can have a negative impact on their emotional wellbeing and self-esteem.

Conversely, ‘Life Story’ work can help children in care begin to understand and accept their personal history, helping to create a secure base to explore their past, present and future.

When a child moves from an institution to a foster family, their journey has often not been straightforward. At Care for Children, we place a high priority on training foster carers to develop a secure base for the children in their care. We incorporate ‘Life Story’ work into all of our training programmes in Thailand as one of the ways to do this. We train social workers, or family placement workers, to be able to develop life story books, which can be a complex and sensitive task. It’s important to capture a child’s journey, but the priority is always to protect the child, helping them to develop a more secure sense of their identity. Family Placement workers are then empowered to work with foster parents to help them maximise the impact of the work with their children. Across Thailand, this model is being used to help young children understand their history, developing a better sense of who they are and how their story might impact their future.

Throughout the training program, the sessions on “life- story” work are always among the most fruitful and eye-opening. It always gives us, and trainees, a real insight into how a vulnerable child’s journey is understood and treated, and enables us to make huge steps forward in our work.

We want children to flourish in their new families, so everything we can do to equip foster families to provide the best long-term care for children is at the heart of our work.