Life story work

Life Story Work (LSW) is a proven intervention that supports the health and wellbeing of children and young people in foster care. Yet despite its endorsement in policy, research shows it remains inconsistently implemented, leaving many young people without the means to understand their own life narratives. Our short film Belonging highlights why LSW must be urgently prioritised as a preventative mental health strategy. Because every child deserves to know who they are.

In a recent news story, a foster carer explained why she had been set up to fail in her care of a seven-year-old boy. Three weeks’ earlier, a child protection agency had handed the child over to her with a garbage bag filled with his belongings. What was not provided was the medication he would need from his first night onwards, his Medicare card, the child’s history, or a list of support people who could be contacted if assistance was needed.

The systemic problems in Australia’s foster care sector are a media constant with ongoing reports highlighting an urgent need for reform (see here, here, and here.)

While the system aims to resolve family issues so individuals can return to their birth families, in practice those problems can be difficult to overcome, resulting in many children and young people remaining in Care for extended periods, often with multiple foster families. The impacts of these shortfalls disrupt foster youth’s ability to form coherent life narratives.

Extensive research demonstrates that a fragmented personal narrative puts children at risk by predisposing them to multiple mental, physical and social problems. Disjointed early life experiences of young people in Care undermine a child’s sense of identity and belonging, and this is compounded by poor recordkeeping and loss of official identity documents – which happens far more often than most may think.

One method that supports belonging and identity is Life Story Work (LSW), a biographical approach that centres on the collection and documentation of young people’s experiences, records and stories. LSW operates from the principle that personalised materials can support and foster youth-centred narratives that connect children and young people not just to what “happened” to them, but to memories, feelings and experiences. Practitioners maintain that what is often referred to as the “intimate archive” – for example, memory boxes, photographs, journals, letters, birthday cards, videos, or oral stories and anecdotes – can play a vital role in helping to animate official records.

However, despite extensive evidence for LSW’s positive impacts and its presence in policy in Australia and internationally, LSW is not being implemented consistently or effectively. As our research demonstrates, there is significant work to do to re-position LSW as a critical tool for good mental health. Grounding our work in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, particularly Article 8, which affirms every child’s right to identity, our work highlights why LSW must be urgently prioritised as an essential component of child welfare practices, rather than viewed as a ‘nice-to-have’.

Recognising storytelling as a critical tool for social change, coupled with our extensive research (see, for example, our 2024 article, and here and here) is the basis for our film, Belonging: The Search for Identity in the Australian Foster care System which advocates for an urgent prioritisation of LSW as a preventative mental health tool.

Co-created using participatory research methods, it tells the story of Hannah, a 20-year-old Australian woman, who was in multiple foster homes from a young age until arriving at her ‘forever’ home aged 10.

The film follows Hannah’s search to understand her identity and the key people who supported her – her foster parents Nigel and Sam, and Shannon Kendrick, a practitioner of Therapeutic Life Story Work, an LSW modality that helps foster youth reclaim their identities. Belonging demonstrates the critical right of every child and young person with a Care experience to know their story, the positive impacts that come with knowing, and the negative impacts of having that right denied.

Studies have shown that being able to recall individual memories, particularly positive memories – often difficult for young people who have suffered from trauma –is critical for emotional regulation, mental health, and to support those with a vulnerability to depression.

This is significant considering that the prevalence of mental health issues experienced by young people in Care has historically been two to five times higher than that reported in the [Australian] National Survey of Mental Health and Well-being for children and adolescents in the general population.

Australia’s Special Commission of Inquiry into Child Protection in NSW showed there are many challenges within the child protection system itself that affect outcomes for children and families. The accumulative consequences of these complexities see many young people going on to experience poor outcomes after exiting foster care.

Evidence both in Australia and internationally suggests young people with a Care experience are less likely to complete school or be employed on an ongoing basis, and more likely to become homeless or experience incarceration. A 2019 report from the Early Intervention Foundation showed that late intervention on issues such as mental health, child protection, youth unemployment and homelessness costs Australian federal and state governments a purported 15.2 billion each year.

In the last twelve months alone there have been at least eight Australian inquiries and reports aiming to improve outcomes for children and young people in Care. Like other recent reports, 2024 Australian Human Rights Commission’s“Help Way Earlier” 2024 report emphasised the need for early intervention and community-led solutions to prevent child removals, especially among Indigenous families and called for a shift from reactive to proactive approaches in child protection.

Yet despite decades of inquiries into foster care, the same issues persist. These issues are now compounded by more children entering care, fewer people volunteering to be foster carers, and more and more professionals leaving the sector. Systematic change remains elusive, with the focus on risk management rather than the well-being of children and young people.

As Jarrod Wheatley, founder and CEO of Professional Individualised Care has pointed out, such a deficit model emphasises surveillance over support, neglecting the needs of children, birth families, and foster carers. What is needed, he argues, is an approach that prioritises relationships, bonds and connections.

Life Story Work is an approach that aims to improve general health and wellbeing by promoting a sense of belonging and connection. It is a process that helps children and young people make sense of their experiences including their relationships with both birth and foster families.

Our research is committed to developing a national Life Story Work strategy that ensures every child and young person in care has equitable access to LSW in a form that meets their individual contexts and needs. By collaborating with key stakeholders, including the Australian Childhood Foundation, and producing knowledge mobilisation resources such as the film Belonging, we are determined to bridge the gap between policy and practice.

This article was written by Milissa Deitz and Rachel Morley, an award-winning academic with over two decades of experience in teaching across the creative industries, communication, and media. Rachel’s work is grounded in a belief that storytelling and creative practice can help build socially responsive, future focused communities.