Podcast season 5: Episode 8 – Life story work in schools

DAWN (00:08):

Welcome to the Creative Life Story Work Podcast, your regular dose of life story work inspiration. Every month, we bring you life story work ideas, tools, and honest insights from a range of perspectives. Stay connected to the latest thinking in life story work, as we talk to people with lived experience, practitioners, local authorities, carers, and people who are shaping the way we help care experienced children and young people make sense of their past, and build a brighter future.

Today, we are focusing on how life story work is being used in schools to support children and young people. What this work actually looks like in practise, how trust is built with young people, and the creative tools that can help children express things that they might not have the words for. I’m absolutely delighted to welcome to our podcast studio, Paula Price. Paula is a therapist delivering therapeutic life story work and play therapy at St. Patrick’s Primary School, where she also runs the school’s therapeutic outreach service: Creative Child Therapy at St. Patrick’s. She was trained in therapeutic life story work by Richard Rose and continues to be supervised by him. She’s a member of Therapeutic Life Story Work International, and she’s also chair of Therapeutic Life Story Work UK. Afternoon, Paula, how lovely to see you.

PAULA (01:52):

Good afternoon, Dawn. It’s really nice to be here.

DAWN (01:54):

Hurrah! I wondered if you could start by telling us a bit about what therapeutic life story work is in your own words.

PAULA (02:06):

Therapeutic life story work is a process by which children can be helped to make sense of their lives. So it’s a creative and a therapeutic way of helping them to process their memories, find out information about their lives that they didn’t know in order to create a coherent narrative which helps them understand themselves better.

DAWN (02:32):

That was a very concise, very concise description. And what was it that drew you to this type of work? Was there a particular moment or experience that led you to becoming a therapeutic life story worker?

PAULA (02:50):

I think it was probably when I was training, because my training was in therapeutic life story work and in play therapy as a dual course at the time. And it was just the more I started to think about the approach, the more I really felt a connection to how it would work. And I think that was particularly when some of the young people I was already working with started to pop into my head. And that’s what really made me think, “Oh, I can see how this relates to this person. I could see how this could meet some of their needs.” And that’s probably the moment that I thought, yeah, this is the way I’d like to go.

DAWN (03:35):

And we’ve never talked to anybody before who’s delivering life story work, therapeutic life story work in a school. So what does a typical day look like for you when you’re in a school setting?

PAULA (03:50):

I suppose as most people would say with any work with their children, young people, but particularly in schools, I think every day is a bit different really. But in terms of therapeutic life story work, it’s about identifying those children first who could benefit from this approach and then working through the stages of the model with them. So a lot of relationship building, which the benefit of it, if it’s children within my own school, often those relationships are already there. So it’s about building on those, building that trust, and then working towards the more complex areas of talking about family history or talking about events in their lives or memories that they have that are sometimes preoccupying them or they’re finding difficult to manage. And again, with doing the outreach, that’s a different thing altogether as well, because that’s going out to other spaces and other schools and other settings to work there.

So that’s a whole load of different elements to the work as well.

DAWN (05:00):

And you talked about building trust with the child. So how do you start building trust with a child who perhaps doesn’t feel ready to talk to you yet?

PAULA (05:14):

There’s a lot of play involved, which all practitioners will know is an important part of the role, but also having that play therapy background. It’s about understanding how much that helps to build a relationship where there’s reciprocal work. I suppose play doesn’t feel like work as well, particularly for children. So it’s about engaging them in that process first and just that let’s get to know each other before we do anything difficult, before we talk about any difficult things or have those challenging conversations, let’s just get to know each other and build up a relationship where we feel like we can be open and honest, but we can also enjoy being with each other. So play is really important. Lots of different games, lots of creative things. It doesn’t even have to require an awful lot of equipment or tools. It could be quite minimalist, but it’s about that idea of playfulness together.

DAWN (06:19):

And what are some of your go-to creative tools or approaches that you like to use that you found really helpful?

PAULA (06:29):

I think a lot of practitioners will recognise some of these tools, but I think one of the ones that I use a lot is the game of squiggles, which is where one person just does a bit of a scribble, a squiggle on a piece of paper. And the other person has to kind of see, “Oh, what does it look like? What could I turn it into? What could I add to make it into something?” And I think because it’s playful, it’s really low challenge as well. No one has to be an artist, no one has to have the best imagination. There’s no winner, there’s no loser, there’s no competition. And I think that appeals to a lot of children because it’s just a bit of fun and it’s a bit of a laugh, but there’s no conflict there for children. Some children love competitive games, but some of them find them quite a challenge.

So I think that’s a good one. The hand prints as well, where you draw around your hand and you can have whatever you like. So each finger could be, I don’t know, something you enjoy, you’re a person you like to be with or your favourite food. And I think with that one, there’s so many different options for what you can choose in the fingers that gives you a lot of scope about if you want to focus it in on getting to know each other a bit better or if you want to start from the very beginning about just starting to help that child feel safe to be in that space with you. .

DAWN (07:55):

I’ve got to admit, Richard shared that exercise with us and I’ve totally stolen it, I use it in all sorts of things. It works great in conferences. I’ve even given it a name, Paula. We call it handy connections. And it’s great in conferences when people don’t know each other to just get them to draw on the paper tablecloth and use it. But I do always say, Richard Rose told us how to do this exercise.

PAULA (08:26):

Well, I think Richard would agree as well. It’s not stealing. It’s sharing best practise.

DAWN (08:36):

I wonder if you would share anonymizing it, of course, a moment that’s really stayed with you, something that shows the power of this way of playing and making those relationships and connections.

PAULA (08:57):

I’m just thinking about a child that pops into my mind there and the playfulness is really important to them because they find a lot of things in life very challenging, but they’re always seeking connection. So the playfulness makes it a safe place to kind of have those connections, to spend that time with somebody without a sense of challenge or competition or anything. But I think as well, it enabled us to get to a space where we were having conversations about their life that they needed to have, but weren’t necessarily looking forward to having. Some children really, really want those answers and want to get into that work, but there are some children who are quite apprehensive about what it’s going to mean and what feelings that’ll bring up. And I think without that relationship of trust and without having the playful elements as well, where the session was also about enjoying spending time together, I’m not sure they would have been able to kind of experience that vulnerability of talking about some of those difficult things.

And they said at the end of one of the sessions, “I couldn’t talk to anyone else about this. I’ve never talked about this.” And I think for me, that was a real moment because it was lots of things about their life that they really should have been able to know or to have talked about or been told about or had explained to them or had that space offered to them just to be heard. And I think the fact that that hadn’t happened until this made me realise how important this work is.

DAWN (10:48):

That’s a really powerful example. Thank you. What kind of changes do you, maybe there aren’t any patterns, but what kind of changes do you tend to see in the children and young people that you’re working with as they move through the therapeutic life story work process?

PAULA (11:07):

As you say, there’s lots of different… There’s not a set pattern like anything with people, but there is… Some children start and they’re holding on to a safe story, which feels safe to them, but isn’t. So for example, that there was nothing wrong in their family and their birth parents were wonderful people who did everything for them and loved them. But of course, where that’s not a safe story is the fact that it’s not actually the case. And then how do you explain why they don’t live with them if everything was fine? So I think it’s about helping children to let go of some of those things that have helped them to feel safe in order to have a better understanding and find a more secure safety. And by secure safety, I suppose something which is built on foundations of something which is more factual and more accurate about their life.

And lots of children will go through a process of… sometimes they become quite angry at what happened within their birth family, but the more that we work through that, the more they’re able to kind of understand all the different elements that were going on at the time, all the different challenges that their parents might have had. And I think they become more empathetic towards their birth parents, but also more understanding of what their birth parents weren’t able to provide that they needed. And hopefully most of the children, which you do see a lot, is they come to a stage of realising that they’re not to blame, so they don’t blame themselves anymore, but also they develop an understanding with their parents where they let go of some of that resentment or sometimes that magical thinking as well. And the hope is that they often go through a process, which we see a lot, is they start to make links between how they as a child or a young person feel and act and react now and kind of where that comes from.

And I think when we understand where some of our feelings and behaviours come from, it helps us to better manage them in the here and now. Although it happens in all different ways and in all different paces for different children, they’re kind of the processes that we hope to see and the changes we hope to see.

DAWN (13:42):

Thank you. Let’s take a short break to hear more about our membership offer.

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DAWN (15:28):

How do schools usually respond to the work that you’re doing? So I’m wondering about the other staff. Are they generally supportive? Do they get involved at all?

PAULA (15:41):

It varies a lot, obviously, with different schools about how much they’re involved and how much they understand about the process. But I think the main thing is that by being invited in, there’s an element there that they’re going to trust you to do something which is going to be beneficial to the child. So I think that’s a positive sign. And I would say mostly my experiences have been that schools are very supportive and want to know more about it. So it’s not just that it’s something that happens in their school, in a different part of school, and that goes on somewhere else. An awful lot of schools, once I start going in, want to know more about it and what happens. And obviously not about the individual child because there is that confidentiality there, but what the process is and what happens and why it’s meant to help children.

Because often I find that I’ll go in to work with one child and then you’ll get a referral at some point in the future because people have kind of seen how it works and seen the impact on the children that have originally gone through that piece of work. Ideally, there’s always time to sort of speak to staff as well. I know that some schools will sometimes want some advice about how do we support the child while they’re going through this piece of work or what do we do just generally in the classroom to support them? And I think that’s always good when a school wants to engage in not just what I’m doing, but, okay, well, what can we do so that you’re here supporting the child in their sessions? What can we do as kind of wrap around care in a way? How else can we help them?

DAWN (17:29):

And what are some of the maybe misconceptions that some of the staff in the schools might have about how you’re working therapeutically with children?

PAULA (17:40):

I suppose one of the things for schools, they’re very public places. The nature of a school is that you have lots of people in one space all learning and communicating and existing together. So I think one of the misconceptions sometimes is about the importance of a confidentiality and a safe space for that work. And usually it’s just because it’s not within the culture of education that those things happen. And then perhaps sometimes schools with the best intentions that we’re trying to support a child, they perhaps want to know some of the information about that child’s life that it’s not really my place or appropriate to share.

DAWN (18:26):

And I’m just thinking about the work that you’re doing in schools and the outreach work that you’re doing, it can be really emotionally heavy work. So I’m wondering how you look after yourself and manage your own wellbeing.

PAULA (18:43):

Supervision is probably the key. I think it’s really important for any practitioner or any therapist to have supervision. It’s a space where you can think about your cases, reflect on all the work that you’re doing, and that thinking time’s really important, but it also can help sometimes with understanding where, as you say, sometimes you can’t work with people in an emotional way and not take some of that on board. So I think it’s about that space of, okay, well, how do we take this reflection from being in a certain place about perhaps worrying about a child or something to how do we make this productive? How do we work towards supporting the child? And then I suppose lots of people have those ways of just the kind of self-care that we think of. So it might be going for a walk, it might be spending time with friends and just switching off from work because I think it’s really important to do those things so that when you go into that space with a child, you’re fully present 100% for them.

DAWN (19:55):

It’s a really big conversation that we’re having in Blue Cabin at the minute around self-care and supervision and how often we have it and the types of projects where it’ll best support it and what about if it’s one day. So it’s just interesting to hear your reflections on someone who’s doing it day in, day out to go on as well.

PAULA (20:17):

I think peer supervision helps as well. It might be that formal supervision takes place once or twice a month, but it’s that it’s connections with some of the other practitioners. So people who kind of understand the work, people who also know what it’s like to kind of be involved in children’s lives at a time where children themselves are finding life quite hard. And I think it’s being able to connect with those people and have those discussions and support each other as peers.

DAWN (20:50):

We’ve started setting it up as calling it buddy sessions, just where we give paid time for artists to have time together. They organise it when they want it and we don’t book it in. They can go for a walk on a beach or they can have a Zoom call however they want to do it. But you’re right, it is about that, talking to somebody who knows what it’s like to do that and they found that really, really helpful. Different to supervision, but as helpful. Why do you think that this work is especially important in schools right now?

PAULA (21:29):

I think when I started, it was a very different landscape in schools, but I think over the last sort of five years in particular, I mean, obviously there’s statutory requirements on schools regarding mental health and wellbeing, but I think schools generally really believe in the fact that if you look at a child holistically, you create the best environment, not only for them to learn, but for them to thrive and develop as a future adult, as a citizen. And I think that probably makes a difference to why it’s important now, because schools are becoming much more of a place where it’s not just about learning, it is about the whole child. So it’s about their emotional wellbeing, it’s about their ability to face challenging things and to thrive. It’s about how do they develop those strategies and those skills to manage their feelings and to work through difficult things.

So I think therapeutic life story work fits in within that context. But I think as well, because of the nature of the work being quite direct compared to some other therapies for children, there is that sense of therapeutic life story work does contain the word work. And although we don’t mean it in the sense of classwork, I think for some children, school is the place where they’re thinking. And so I always give children a choice even if the referrals come from school, but I always give them a choice about where they want to do their therapeutic work because it has to be a safe space for them. So some of them will choose the home, some of them will choose school, some of them might choose somewhere completely different. But I think for those who choose school, it’s because sometimes it’s a safe space, but also it’s a space where they are thinking.

They’re already kind of engaged in that, connecting with their thoughts and their feelings. So I do think therapeutic work can often fit in really well to the school day. And also for some children, particularly if they’re quite young or if they’re teenagers in its exam time after school times or kind of that time when they really need to switch off and wind down. So doing work within the school day really helps as well, even if it is in the home, but it’s about taking that time to think, okay, this is our time and space where we feel ready and able to do that.

DAWN (24:10):

Thank you. And my final question is, looking ahead, how do you hope that therapeutic life story work will evolve in the future?

PAULA (24:24):

I would like to see it more extensively in schools. I think when I first started, it wasn’t an approach that schools were at all familiar with because it’s very much an approach that’s more within the social care realm. I think now there are a lot more schools that are becoming aware of it and aware of the benefits of it. I would like that to expand. I would like there to be an opportunity for more practitioners to work in schools. And I think as well, one of the things that I would like with the All About Me process, which is obviously the first tier of therapeutic life story work, which is more of a universal process for a lot more young people. I’d like to see all about me become more of an approach that’s used in schools in general, because it doesn’t require looking back over family history.

It kind of looks at the here and now for the child and what the child chooses to share is what’s included in it. And I just think there will be so many uses for that in schools. So transition times, getting to know new teachers, being a new child to a new school, just kind of that way of self-review as well, kind of checking in with the child about, okay, so where are we up to for you? How are you feeling about things? And so I’d like to see more all about me in schools and I’d like to, as I say, I’d like to see more practitioners working in schools. And I do think that is growing. So I’d love to see it thrive in that sense. And just generally for therapeutic life story work, I’d just like to see an expansion of it across all sectors so that more children are able to access the benefits of it.

DAWN (26:12):

Thriving children. Well, that’s a good note to leave our podcast on, Paula. Thank you so much for giving us an insight into your role in school, something that we’ve not talked about before. It’s been a delight to talk to you this afternoon. Thank you very much.

PAULA (26:30):

Oh, thanks very much, Dawn. Lovely talking to you.

DAWN (26:37):

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 practise. You can find out more about Creative Life Story Work on our website, creativelifestorywork.com, and you can find us on LinkedIn @creativelifestorywork. Please do get in touch there with any comments or questions as we’d love to hear from you. 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.