Creative Life Story Work evaluation

Creative Life Story Work is a new approach to helping care-experienced children and young people understand their own life stories.

This child-centred method has been developed by Blue Cabin and is based on the Rose Model of therapeutic life story work.

Evaluating Creative Life Story Work in the North East

Following a pilot in partnership with South Tyneside Council, Creative Life Story Work was rolled out across three local authority areas in the North East of England – Darlington, Gateshead and South Tyneside.

This roll-out was funded by What Works Centre for Social Care and evaluated by Coram and Ipsos Mori, and the findings of this evaluation are available to read below.

Key findings

Findings of the evaluation included:

Find out more about putting Creative Life Story Work in place in your organisation here.

• 85% of local authority staff who responded to a survey thought that Creative Life Story Work is more effective than traditional life story work
• A better understanding of care experience and identity were most often cited among the benefits to care-experienced children and young people of Creative Life Story Work
• Of those involved in delivery of Creative Life Story Work, there was generally a perception it had improved the relationships between carers and children and young people, and improved well-being and stability of placements
• In interviews, no negative effects of taking part were reported, and carers and children and young people recommended the programme.

No statistically significant differences were found in wellbeing, placement stability or school stability between children and young people offered and not offered the intervention. It’s not known whether this was due to low statistical power and further evaluation has been recommended.

The role of young researchers

The study was supported by a co-production project which recruited 12 care-experienced young people in the three local authorities to provide input into evaluation tools and reporting.

The voices of care-experienced children and young people

The evaluation included interviews with eight children and young people, and nine foster carers and kinship carers.

“[the programme has] made me realise my worth.” (Young person)

Read the report

Please see a digital version of the report below, or you can download the full report and summary if you prefer.

Find out more about Creative Life Story Work

Find out more about putting Creative Life Story Work in place in your organisation here.