Session 8

Unit Three: Professional Parent Revisited
 

Life Books and Memory Boxes

We would like to end this section by talking about a very important activity for both children and foster or adoptive parents. Part of your responsibility as a foster or adoptive parent will be helping children to reconstruct and chronicle their history including how they came into care and their life while in placement.

This involves helping the caseworker in the development of the child’s life story and history. The creation of Life Books and Memory Boxes can be a rewarding activity for both child and foster parents. (Ideally, birth parents could also be involved in this process.)

Children rely on their caregivers and caseworkers to organize their life history information and to chronicle significant events and milestones that occur while they are in care. The Life Book is a vehicle that can be used to capture this information. It is a compilation of photos, writings, reflections and memorabilia. Depending on the age of the child and their individual circumstances, it is put together by the child with their caseworker, therapist, foster parent, adoptive parent or guardian, along with other significant adults in the child’s life.

Think about the kinds of things you might save or put into a family album or scrapbook for your own child. It is put together over time and should be considered a possession of the child.

Children in care have unique challenges in terms of knowing/remembering key facts about themselves, working through the changes and losses in their lives and maintaining a positive self-image. The Life Book can contain information to help a child keep the facts of their life story accurate, such as members of their birth family, names, ages, etc. There may be pages in the book that deal with the child’s feelings about their birth family, memories of life with their foster family, or the first meeting with their adoptive family.

As foster parents it is important to document important events, take pictures and save memorabilia. Discussion should occur with the child’s caseworker as to who is in the best position, based on the closeness of their relationship to the child or area of expertise, to do particular sections of the Life Book.

Among the items to be included are: