Therapeutic Life Story Work – Advanced (Zoom)

Giving every child a safe, supported space to make sense of their past and the freedom to write what comes next.

Children separated from their birth families carry fragmented, confusing, or painful histories. Without support, unresolved trauma, loss, and “magical thinking” can shape every part of their present, driving emotional dysregulation, relational breakdown, and a compromised sense of self.

This comprehensive, evidence-based training equips carers, social workers, and frontline practitioners with the skills, theoretical depth, and creative toolkits needed to guide children through a structured, healing-centred life story process.

Key Learning Highlights

• Foundations & Legislative Frameworks: Understand UK statutory care planning guidelines, local authority duties, and how life story work builds long-term identity and self-worth.
• Therapeutic Depth & Brain Science: Explore how early attachment disruption, trauma, and chronic stress reshape the developing brain (amygdala, prefrontal cortex) and body.
• The TLSW Model (Reflect-Compassion-Move On): Learn how to introduce the past as “markers for the present,” replacing self-blame with self-compassion and insight.
• Creative Methods & Toolkits: Master hands-on techniques, including genograms (extended family mapping), wallpaper work (large-scale physical timelines), therapeutic stories, games, and digital tools.
• Life Story Books & The Joy Rees Model: Learn to co-create honest, age-appropriate, child-centred life story books that communicate complex or harrowing histories without re-traumatising the child.
• Intersectionality & Identity: Actively integrate race, ethnicity, gender, disability, culture, and religion as central dimensions of a child’s story.
• Carer Records & Memorabilia: Establish practical habits for gathering physical anchors (photographs, certificates, memory boxes) and involving children directly in their own record-keeping.
• Practitioner Self-Care & Reflection: Develop the relational attunement, emotional resilience, and reflective habits needed to hold a child’s story safely while preventing vicarious trauma.

Why Choose This Course?

Moving far beyond administrative file-building, this course translates complex developmental psychology into a compassionate, child-led therapeutic practice. It empowers you to give looked-after children a coherent, truthful, and dignified narrative which provides the stable foundation they need to step into a hopeful future.

Who Should Attend: Foster Carers, Kinship Carers, Supervising Social Workers, Adoption Practitioners, Residential Care Staff, and Children’s Services Support Professionals.

Format: This is a live training session delivered through  Zoom. It includes taught sections, small group work, work in pairs, and whole group discussions.

Hand-outs & Certificates: Downloadable hand-outs and certificates will be provided.