Podcast Season 4: Episode 1 – Supporting children and young people affected by grief and loss

Please note that this transcript is auto-generated and therefore will contain some errors and natural pauses in conversation.

[00:00:00] DAWN: Welcome to the Creative Life Story Work podcast, where we explore how to make life story work better for all care experienced children and young people. Creative Life Story Work is an approach which can improve children and young people’s lives and their relationships with others, both at home and at work.

[00:00:26] It’s based on the Rose model of therapeutic life story work. Every month we’ll explore a different aspect of creative life story work and we’ll give insights into how you can use this approach to help care experienced children and young people make sense of their past and build a brighter future.

[00:00:46] Today we are focusing on how children in foster care or moving on to adoption can be supported to process the feelings of grief and loss.

[00:00:59] I’m delighted to welcome to our podcast studio, Ciara McClelland. Ciara is a social worker and drama therapist and has over 13 years practice experience. She specializes in working with children, Young people, parents, families, and caregivers impacted by adverse childhood experiences. Ciara is a training practitioner from Trauma Informed Consultancy Services, which offers an extensive range of training sessions related to all aspects of how we can apply a trauma informed framework to settings, services, and systems.

[00:01:37] This conversation will also be released by Lively Minds, the mental health podcast, who we are delighted to be partnering with for this episode. Listeners can also delve deeper into the world of drama therapy on an earlier episode of Lively Minds, where Ciara discusses it in detail with hosts Will and Ellie.

[00:01:57] A huge warm welcome to you today, Ciara. Lovely to see you again.

[00:02:01] CIARA: Lovely to see you again, Dawn. Thanks for having me.

[00:02:05] DAWN: I know we were saying before nearly a year ago since we spoke. It’s crazy, isn’t it? I can’t believe it.

[00:02:11] CIARA: Yeah, I can’t believe it. Time just flies by, flies by.

[00:02:18] DAWN: What does grief and loss mean in the context of the conversation that we’re having today?

[00:02:23] CIARA: So grief and loss Dawn, for children and young people in care or care experience can mean a number of things, but one of the main losses that they would have experienced is the separation from their mother. So that, that in itself will be a profound loss that, that children, young people will, will be grieving and.

[00:02:47] as we know grief can have a profound impact on the brain and the body.

[00:02:52] DAWN: So I was looking up some of the definitions around for grief, a lot. Well, I’ve got one here from the Oxford English Dictionary, intense sorrow, especially caused by someone’s death. And I was just struck that lots of the definitions that I was coming up with were always linked to bereavement, but actually that’s often not the case when you’re working with a child who’s, has had experience of the, the care system.

[00:03:22] CIARA: The tricky one, isn’t it? So even though children in care or care experience might not have actually experienced an actual death, a bereavement, although I’m sure a lot of them have, sometimes one could argue that it can feel like a death, a loss of a main attachment. Usually we have. children who will have lost an attachment to their main caregiver, their, their mum or their dad.

[00:03:53] And really that can sometimes feel like a death to children and young people. So I think in ways they will be grieving it as if it is a death, I would argue.

[00:04:05] DAWN: What behaviours might a foster carer notice in a child that they’re bringing into their home? What behaviours might they see have been caused by loss of an attachment?

[00:04:18] CIARA: I imagine they might see a number of kind of behaviours and it’s different for every child and young person, isn’t it? But we’re born in connection to the, to our mum and we have that bond, so there will be a withdrawal. that they’re going through. And so we might see isolation, we might see low mood, we might see irritability, anger, sadness, we’ll probably see extreme ends of different emotions.

[00:04:52] So a very angry child or a very depressed child or people pleaser, controlling their food, not eating enough, eating too much. We might see children and young people having some real difficulties around relationships, given that that is the original wounding, the loss of the secure attachment. So you might have someone who then becomes overly attached to a certain friend or a certain teacher, adult or, and they might get over attached to people who might not be any good for them as well.

[00:05:36] And then you might have someone who just. doesn’t want to attach to anyone because there’s a fear of, actually, and this is a big thing for our children and young people, is that they are too scared to get close to anyone because the fear that it might be taken away, that they might lose that attachment.

[00:05:58] So you find that then there’s that dance between, oh, can I get close? Oh no, that’s too close. And that can cause all sorts of challenges as well.

[00:06:09] DAWN: At Blue Cabin, some projects were working with tiny babies, a couple of weeks old, and others working with care leavers at the age of 18. And I’m wondering, does that make a difference at those different ages as to how they might behave when responding to grief and loss?

[00:06:33] CIARA: Yeah, I think it’s different for different ages, isn’t it? And especially for a baby who’s just developing, especially a baby in his first three years. There’s research that points to that the first three to five years are the most important years for a baby because they are still growing, still developing, still trying to understand who they are in relation to their mother.

[00:06:59] And there’s some research that points to the first few years that they actually still, they feel like they are part of their mother. They are their mother. There’s limited sense of self. So those years are crucial. And especially for a baby to lose the bond and the connection with the mother in those first few years will have a profound impact on their growth, their development, and their The relationships further down the line, for different ages, it will be different.

[00:07:30] And we might see children, young people overly attached to people or not attached at all. So we might see lots of different detachment kind of difficulties that can come through from that, you know, relational trauma, which is what a loss of the bond with the mother would be. Also requires relational healing.

[00:07:51] So what we’ll see is, is children, young people trying to navigate the relationships because that’s where the original wounding is. And, and, and they’re trying to kind of make sense of who they are to other people. And, and that’s where we find a lot of the challenges are, but also where a lot of the healing comes from to cope.

[00:08:11] Karen Trisman, she talks about relational trauma needs relational healing.

[00:08:17] DAWN: Let’s have a short break now so that you can hear about creative life story work, membership and some of the benefits that it could bring for you and your work.

[00:08:30] TRAILER: We want people to gain more of an understanding about what it’s like to be care experienced and to have a better understanding of what it actually means.

[00:08:39] Could creative life story work make a difference to the care experienced children and young people you work with? Maybe you’re a social worker. I think we forget at our peril that actually telling a child the story of their early life is one of the most profound uses of social work power that we could ever operate.

[00:09:01] Perhaps you’re a foster carer. You know, when they say it’s all about the child, it’s not because our experience It’s about the carer and the child and it just gives a new angle to our relationship because we’re learning about each other together. A Creative Life Story Work membership will give you or your whole team Access to resources, including activities you can use in direct work with children and young people, training with life story work experts and lots more.

[00:09:31] And I think a lot of our children are looking for meaning, looking for, you know, well, why is it I feel this way when my. You know, my friends don’t. Why is it I get angry internally and my friends don’t? The greatest thing we see is when we are able to say to young people, this is your story, this is about who you are.

[00:09:46] And then children towards the end say, it’s not my fault that these things happened, but it is something that I can do something about. And once we have that, Then we know we can move forward. Find out about our membership for individuals and for organizations on our website creativelifestorywork. com

[00:10:07] DAWN: How does your role as a drama therapist, your therapeutic practice. How does that support those children and young people to deal with the disconnect and start to heal? What is it that’s happening in those creative sessions? That you’re running with those children and their carers or that the, the, the special people in their lives.

[00:10:34] CIARA: So when we’re working with children and young people who’ve experienced relational trauma, we’re in many ways trying to relationally repair that. Okay. So if a child comes to me or a young person on their own for an individual session, my main objective is to. try to relationally repair any kind of relational trauma they’ve experienced.

[00:11:00] So that might look like trying to create a safe space for them, similar to what they might experience in the mother’s womb. Okay. So everything’s about safety and nurture and trying to offer as much holding and containing and nurturing as possible because they might not have always experienced that.

[00:11:26] especially if there was a rupture at birth. So it’s about trying to repair that rupture through offering the opposite. If I was working with the, the adopt, the foster carer or the adopter and the child, again, it’s about trying to repair that relational trauma by going back almost to those early developmental moments that the child might’ve missed.

[00:11:56] So, My practice would draw on models such as TheraPlay or DDP, and we might be doing things like what a mother and child might do. In the first few years, so it might be that mirroring when the baby moves, makes a sound, then the mom moves and makes a sound, serve and return, hide and seek, all of those really early developmental exchanges that, you know, our children, young people might’ve missed out on.

[00:12:31] So, so that’s a lot of the kind of repair work that I would do with, with parent and child.

[00:12:38] DAWN: I’m interested in that developing and strengthening the relationship between the child and the adults in there. And you’ve described a space where Uh, safe enough to tell their own story, to have that space where they can tell their story.

[00:12:54] But there’s also something there about the foster carer or the adoptive parent witnessing that and hearing that and the shift that that takes in developing that relationship. So seeing that child with a different set of eyes, I guess, is what we often see in some of the workshops that we do at Blue Cabin, you know, the foster carer seeing something new about that child.

[00:13:19] And I’m wondering if that’s what’s happening in your sessions as well.

[00:13:23] CIARA: Yeah. So it’s both ends. So it’s, it’s around trying to support the parent child to to strengthen their bond through drama therapy, theraplay techniques, so strengthen their bond, their attunement, the reciprocity, all of that kind of stuff, but also to witness each other.

[00:13:42] And it’s in that witnessing where the insight comes and the change. So I can give you some examples. So a sound play or role play or puppet play is sometimes the mediums that are most popular. So we might have a child who uses some puppets to tell a story that they aren’t able to tell in real life because it’s too difficult.

[00:14:08] And then the parent or parents will be able to witness that in the session. And then as a therapist, I would invite. some kind of reflections on that, or we might think about who, who the puppet reminds the parent of, and, and that can open up some conversation about other things. So, so yeah, so it’s about allowing both to witness each other and, and realize things that they might not realize in everyday life.

[00:14:38] about each other.

[00:14:39] DAWN: And I wondered what the impacts might be that you see in your sessions about multiple moves that those, some of those children might’ve had or different places that they’re going on. So it’s almost like a repetition of those beginnings and endings that are needing to be dealt with and how your practice as a therapist supports what those multiple impacts might be.

[00:15:09] CIARA: It’s difficult, isn’t it? Cause as you know, the system sometimes can, can unfortunately cause more trauma essentially to, to children and young people because of the continuous moves that they can experience. So, so really my practice really, again, is about really coming back to that sense of how can I ensure that I keep a safe container.

[00:15:37] for the child or young person. So if they’ve experienced lots of different moves, then it’s super, super important that I am consistent so that the therapy is in the same room, at the same place, at the same time, starts at the same time, It’s meant to start and end at that time as well. Especially coming into the room and leaving the room, those transition points are really quite difficult for some children I work with.

[00:16:10] So it’s about being mindful of those. And reflecting in my clinical supervision about how I can support those transitions as well. So it’s about being mindful of those transition points and how we can name those and support those points. And also in the room around exploring those moves. I’ve had young people who might, might use the room in a creative way to think about all of those moves.

[00:16:34] You know, I’ve had some children who’ve actually used the whole room, like put out a big piece of paper And they’ve, they’ve put different objects or postcards or creative things in different points along their kind of, their lifeline. We call it a continuum lifeline. And then they’re able to step back and witness that.

[00:16:56] And the parent can witness it. The therapist can witness it. And that can open up a conversation around, wow, you’ve had a lot of moves and et cetera, et cetera. So, so that would be a real life connection example, but, but also There is a space for story and metaphor and sound play. I see a lot of play from children around lots of different houses in the sand, lots of different structures moving around a lot, that kind of stuff.

[00:17:23] So the therapy space allows them to explore, like, what it means to have all of those moves. But they can only really explore all of those moves and the chaos of all that moving in a safe space. container in a safe space. So if we don’t provide that, then, you know, we’re not going to provide enough safety for them to tell the story really.

[00:17:44] DAWN: And, and because you’ve got the foster carers or perhaps a social worker or adoptive parent in there as well, do you have to do a separate piece of work with them to get, to support them to understand what it is that’s happening in that space?

[00:18:02] CIARA: The model that I’m working from, I work with the family, but there’s a sense that we be, we’re led by the child.

[00:18:10] So if the child just wants sessions on their own, that’s what happens. Okay, so there’s a time and a space, so it might be an individual piece of work with the child, where they need a safe space to explore their story. And it just might sit like that. And we get there through kind of assessment and conversation with the social worker and the referrer and that kind of thing.

[00:18:31] And there’s, there’s a criteria for that. Kind of piece of work. And then the other model or way we can work is the child and the parent come into sessions together. And that’s where we do all that work around building and strengthening the bond and the therapeutic processes. But then there is an offer of a therapeutic parenting space.

[00:18:54] for the parent online. So there’ll be a parent and child session, but also there’ll be a space for a parent, for a parent and therapist or parents and therapists. And that’s where we think about different processes and what it might’ve meant in the therapy room when they did this. And actually how can we then take something from a therapeutic process, say for example, the PACE model, how can we take that from the therapy room and apply that at home?

[00:19:23] So it’s about how we can then transition and strengthen that kind of therapeutic parenting slash thinking at home. The child knows that the parents meet with the therapist online. Sometimes they’ll come into the room and say hello. They also have the option just to have a session on their own without the parents as well.

[00:19:42] So that’s, that’s the model that I work with, with the families I support that, that seems to have the best outcome. and best feedback.

[00:19:53] DAWN: That’s a lovely picture you paint of your sessions with the choice offered for child and adult to think about how they spend their time with you.

[00:20:05] CIARA: So I could give you a quick example of that.

[00:20:07] Yes, please. I’m supporting a teenager who hates the therapy room. Hates it. So we didn’t go into the therapy room. So we started, yeah. So we started, we met at the therapy door. And we, well, we agreed to meet at the therapy door, the parents would leave her off. And then we would go for a walk and get a drink and a snack from a cafe and go to a park and, and, and most of the kind of talking and getting to know each other happened through walking on the street.

[00:20:39] And this is a young person who lived a lot of her life on the streets and just hated the idea of going into a therapy room for many reasons. So once we finished the walking and talking, we would come back to the therapy door and the parents would pick her up. But after a few sessions, she was then intrigued about therapy.

[00:20:59] the therapy room. So she knew it was there, she’d seen it in the first session. So then the third session she decided to come into the therapy room and we had a look around etc etc and we then done a session around her thinking about her relationship with her parents. And we use some wooden dolls for that.

[00:21:17] And she draws, she can then place different feelings and emotions on the, the body and, and how they make her feel and how they get on. And then from that session, there was an invitation to where the parents can It sounds like you’ve a lot to say to your parents and a lot that you would like them to hear and there’s always an option for them to come in.

[00:21:38] And she, she said, Oh yeah, we did that years and years ago, but yeah, I would love that. And I said, well, I’ll leave it up to you. And she’s asked both of them to come in. So that’s an example of how it’s led by a child. She was like, I’m not coming to therapy, I’m not going in the therapy room. I was like, okay, you don’t have to.

[00:21:55] As long as, as long as we’re mindful about it and we, we seek clinical supervision around those kind of decisions, then

[00:22:04] DAWN: I’m a big fan of a walk and talk, or actually as some of my Irish colleagues refer to it as a wander and a ponder, which made me laugh as well. Oh, I love that. Yeah, you can have that. I’d steal that one.

[00:22:16] Let’s go for a wander and a ponder. So you are delivering a live classroom for Blue Cabin in October. And I wondered, for somebody who’s attending your live classroom on grief and loss, what might be some of the key. Takeaways, not giving away the crown jewels, but what might be some of the key insights that somebody attending your live classroom would take away with them?

[00:22:39] CIARA: Some of the takeaways will be around thinking about how grief can impact the body and the brain. Which can be quite significant impact and also thinking about practical ways to support and hold space for children and young people who’ve experienced grief. We’ll be looking at the power of relationships and safe relationships and how to be a safe anchor for the children you support.

[00:23:12] We’ll be looking at some stuff around the power of ritual. And supporting children, young people around finding a ritual that helps them move through grief and whatever else comes up. Cause I know there’s going to be lots of professionals there and a mix of people with a range of experience. So there’ll also be a space for people to share and all to learn from each other, really.

[00:23:38] DAWN: Fantastic. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ciara. And thank you so much for our conversation today and. Painting such a vivid picture of the work that you’re doing with children and their families. Thank you very, very much. Lovely, lovely to speak to you.

[00:23:55] CIARA: And you. Thanks Dawn.

[00:24:01] DAWN: Whether you’re a foster carer, someone who has experience with the care system, or you work with children and young people, we hope this episode has given you an insight into how we can make Life Story work better for young people, and how you can use it in your own practice. Thank you very much. You can find out more about Creative Life Story work on our website, creativelifestory.

[00:24:23] com. And you can find us on LinkedIn and X at creative L S W. Please do get in touch there with any comments or questions as we’d love to hear from you. And if your podcast app allows you to, please do leave us a review as it really helps others to find our show. So until next month, bye for now.