Barnardo's Fostering & Adoption NI

Story Work: Helping Foster Children Make Sense of Their Past

• Barnardo's Fostering & Adoption NI

Share episode

What happens when a child in foster care asks the profound questions: "Who am I?" "Why am I here?" or "What happened to my parents?" These seemingly simple questions require thoughtful, age-appropriate responses that honour a child's right to understand their own story while protecting their emotional wellbeing.

Meet Emma, an Art Therapist, from our Barnardo's Glasgow service who shares how creative approaches offer unique pathways for children to express and process difficult emotions. With the use of a fictional case study, Sharon, a supervising social worker from our Northern Ireland service, walks us through how narrative work can help a child feel orientated within their own story. 
Whether you're a foster carer, social worker, therapist, or simply interested in supporting vulnerable children, this conversation offers invaluable insights into how thoughtful story work helps children integrate difficult experiences into a coherent narrative that supports healthy identity development.


Learn more about fostering and adoption with Barnardo’s:
https://www.barnardos.org.uk/get-support/fostering-and-adoption

To learn more about fostering and adoption in NI, visit our Linktr.ee:
https://linktr.ee/barnardosfosteringni

To ask a question, give us some feedback or make a topic request, email us at:
BFANI@barnardos.org.uk

Foster belonging with us!

Ness:

Welcome to the Barnardo's Fostering and Adoption Northern Ireland podcast. Each episode we will meet families and team members from right across our fostering and adoption services. We're aiming to get behind the scenes so we can learn more about what it's really like to foster. Welcome to the Barnardo's online event story work with foster children. We've got Emma, who is one of our art therapists in Scotland and Glasgow, and Sharon, who is from the Northern Ireland team and is one of our supervising social workers.

Ness:

That the children you are working with have often experienced trauma, may be disassociated from experiences that they've had. May have had very complicated things happen to them that they can't process or they're too young to process. May be emotionally very confused, may be holding some levels of blame and anger and loss and frustration. So there's a lot of different things that are going on. On top of that, the care system is complicated and they're not going to understand how the system works, perhaps why they can't be with their birth family, perhaps why siblings aren't with them them. Perhaps why their foster carers can't tell them what's happening next because a care plan hasn't been resolved. I mean, these are very big questions, aren't they?

Emma:

Art therapy is a very powerful therapeutic modality which can be used for both adults and children. I originally trained with adults and then adolescents, and when I went through that process in 2010,. Really, the main themes were coming up of unresolved childhood trauma that many adults had never really been able to work through through talking therapies. So art therapy is a form of a non-directive psychotherapy. It's called psychodynamic psychotherapy. So what that means is each session is led by the child, so it's what the child brings to the room. You follow the child's pace, you follow the child's sort of direction within the room. When a child first comes to therapy so the youngest can be from about four up to 18 often that very first introduction to the room, you just think where are they going to take themselves? Sometimes they're explorative, sometimes they're not, but through conversation and exploring different art materials or playing slowly, slowly, um, difficult thoughts and feelings can be safely and confidentially shared within a therapeutic space and what that does is to develop a young person's sort of sense of self-awareness and their growth. And the sessions are weekly at the same day, same time for 50 minutes. Foster carers bring the children to the therapy room and they're incredibly supportive throughout this whole process and they know not to ask what happened in the session, what's going on. Obviously, um, we have therapy reviews and um we monitor closely about how the child is progressing and the key thing, key themes are arising. But it's very, very effective, particularly for children, I feel, that have been through very challenging, difficult beginnings, because for many children some of the trauma they may well have been through is that pre-verbal stages of development where there isn't actually words to express and even begin to recognize these feelings they're having in their body. So art therapy is helping about expressing yourself through play or materials and, with me alongside the young person, it's helping name those feelings and helping with the emotional regulation. So I feel it's a very um honorable job. Um, I feel very passionate about it.

Emma:

Um, when I worked with the adults when I did my training and then after I was qualified NHS, you got 18 sessions with Barnardo's when I started. Um, graham interviewed me eight years ago, first art therapist in Glasgow, to come along and I said would it be possible to make the sessions open ended? Because for 18 sessions, that's the max you ever got it just didn't seem long enough. So working amongst the children's team in Glasgow is so fantastically supportive. We're a strong team that actively talk about each child and very, very child led and so many of the children.

Emma:

They come in age five and then, when they feel ready to end art therapy and they can end, and so some children stay for three, four or five years. It's totally up to them. But like all modalities of counseling or therapy, it's really up to the child. So if the child says I don't want to go and see Emma, I don't need to hear any reason as to why or any explanation. We just try and work out what's been coming up for the child that may be difficult for them at the moment and do we need a little stopgap or is there something else going on? So it's very much I work one-to-one with the child, but it's a whole team around the child as well where we all work very, very closely following the child as they go on the journey through art therapy.

Ness:

Fantastic. It's so nice to hear that you're working beyond 18 sessions, because it's always been my bugbear that with therapy, part of the process of healing is that safe attachment and allowing a child or an adult to end when they think it's appropriate is so key. And of course I actually you know I am coming with a bit of a counsellor head-on and I know that meaning making, a crisis in meaning making, is one of the key reasons that people end up in therapy in the first place. And I suppose I'm thinking particularly about, obviously, the vulnerable children and young people that we are working with here in Barnardo's and how you might be working with that meaning making in a creative way with those children and what that might look like sometimes.

Emma:

Yeah, I like the phrase meaning making. I haven't heard it before. Um, it's a very interesting journey for each child and at different paces. Every single child is completely different. Like I say, some child the first session, they'll tell you very clearly if they go towards the doll's house and they may well make quite clear symbolic play, but just keep it within the symbolism and not have the words to express it. Yet. Or you may have a child that has never, ever um had kind of um messy type of play.

Emma:

I say to the child, and make sure they know that all feelings are accepted here, um, no matter how you come to therapy, what you show me, you will never be judged. You can make as much noise as you like. I do say that the room, the room is soundproof. It's not quite soundproof, it's thick enough walls, but there's everything from drums to cymbals to any kinds of materials, and a lot of things are also in drawers. So slowly, slowly, the child may explore, or quickly, quickly, whatever the case, it's just that unconditional acceptance, building, that attachment relationship, of that unconditional support for a child. So when they make things um, and they'll be like I can't do art, I'll explain.

Emma:

This isn't about art, it's. You know you can use materials, but it's not what you make, what it looks like, it's more the process. Let's take the pencil or the brush in a journey, see what comes out, because for young people and even adults, our brains hold a lot of visual imagery. So sometimes, if we haven't even worked through the thoughts of how we're going through, something in our minds can displace the visual imagery on paper and do that within the safe therapeutic space. They create a distance from themselves with the memory or the situation they're going through, and within that space is the space for the safe exploration of the thoughts and feelings and helping them to slowly work through that. If they bring that forward. I don't ever invite myself into the artwork or say, oh wonder, you know, I just gently be alongside them and see if what they want to share and slowly, slowly, it all depends.

Ness:

I like that. That's such a beautiful explanation, allowing that space, that safe space and distance to be able to explore difficult feelings and thoughts through a creative lens, and also the physical regulation as well that you're physically being involved with different materials, materials and and I suppose I'd ask you, emma, as a psychotherapist, you know why do you think it's important for us as people to understand our own story, whatever age we are?

Emma:

I think it's usually important in life because it helps you have that sense and understanding of yourself and identity. I think for many young people starting out in therapy, once they, um, really realize they're within a safe therapeutic space, they'll start to ask questions but like why am I here, who am I, where did I come from, and or why was I abandoned, or you know? And I think when a child can come forward with curiosity instead of fear or anxiety, and just to work gently with that curiosity, and if I can be transparent and say I think that's a really good question and I actually don't quite know the answer right now. But how about? I'll speak to the social worker. We could write this down together, because no question is a silly question. Let's just gently, gently think about how we could approach this together. And it is hugely important.

Emma:

And there's although I've never trained in life story work I'm not a life story worker over the course of being an art therapist, narrative has become very, very important within my work, and even from in terms of a child coming into therapy. Why are they coming into therapy? Now, that's a very important part for a child to think about the narrative. Why am I coming in. Is it because I'm angry? Is there something wrong with me? So it's being very careful about how the child hears, why they'll be coming for some support for myself or a child that maybe struggles to get in the car to come up to therapy and they need the extra support you know, making a little comfort blanket or a little story or something to support them. Or a child may be going through um a really difficult change within family circumstances or moving from a school into a therapeutic setting of the school, and just helping them feel that they're not alone through this process. That and I always kind of put myself into the mind of the child. How would I feel if I was five right now? What would I need to know about? What's going to change for me? What does this actually mean? And I always try and put myself into the mindset of a child going through things.

Emma:

For one of the children actually, they were in one-to-one therapy for so long but questions started arising about where am I from? And it was slowly, slowly, that this work evolved where the foster mom came into sessions with the child and we began a life story and that was a very kind of natural progression from the one to one work into bringing the foster mom in and just basically rolling a piece of paper out in the room and saying you know where would you like to begin? And just this is like a windy road. You know, there could be a road, there could be hills, it could be sea, but all journeys are windy and let's go on this journey, the three of us together, bc. But all journeys are windy and let's go on this journey the three of us together.

Emma:

And so all these different parts have just really underlined how important narrative is and and that sense of being held and contained as well. So anything that a child makes in art therapy stays with me in the room. So if they start a narrative of their life or this, this big roll of like 20 foot paper I've got everything stays until the work is completed.

Ness:

So it feels very, very held and supported and also, I imagine, protected, so they can go away and not think about it and know that they can come back exactly so at the end of the session it's just double checking.

Emma:

Is there anything that's come up for either of you that maybe you've got more questions about? Is there anything more we need to think about so that when you leave here, you're leaving all of this with me, because I stay back here and I think about you both, and so they know that it's being held and contained? Yeah, I think that's a very important part. I know I found that personally when I went through my psychotherapy and as part of my training. I like that. I like being able to sort of share those very vulnerable raw parts and know that they're being held and looked after until the following session.

Ness:

I'm going to bring Sharon in, who's from our Northern Ireland service. One of the reasons that this event is occurring at all is because I had the pleasure of listening to Sharon talk about a specific case where she had supported a child with narrative work who'd had a really difficult, difficult set of challenges ahead of them and I didn't really understand how it worked within social work. But I wanted to bring it to this session today. But of course, we don't want to talk about a real child, so we've created a fictional one, an amalgamation, if you will. Sharon, do you want to talk through Blake, or shall I explain who he is?

Sharon:

Yeah, I can talk it through.

Sharon:

So Blake is 12 years old.

Sharon:

He has been in foster care for two years so since he was 10 years old and his care plan hasn't been finalized, and so quite often children would be sitting in the care system waiting to hear what is going to happen to them and that can take a couple of years is quite normal for that to go through while he's waiting for his mum to be assessed and find out whether or not he can return home.

Sharon:

So Blake has questions and hopes for the future. He hopes that one day his family would be reunited and he and Callum, his wee brother, will be reunited. His younger brother, callum, is in a different placement and he is being considered for adoption due to his age, but that's not finalized yet, and he's been asking his carers about living with his brother and whether he will go back home to his mum and his birth dad has died from a drugs overdose and his mum struggles with addiction and mental health, and he doesn't know. He doesn't know what happened to his dad, but he knows that his dad died suddenly, and so I think a lot of these issues are things that we are, that we are dealing with within our service, and they are sadly more common than we would like them to be.

Ness:

Yeah. So to recap, here we've got this young boy who's been in foster care for two years. He's at that age where he's unlikely to be considered for adoption he's 10 to 12. And actually his care plan hasn't been finalized. The younger brother is only two and is more likely to end up down the adoption pathway because of his age. Again, his care plan hasn't been finalised.

Ness:

So Blake is not going to know that he and Callum, his brother, are not going to be living together in the future, assuming these plans go ahead. And Blake may not know if he's going to be staying with the foster carers he's with. He may like being with the foster carers he's with, but he may also want to be with his mum and may have conflicted feelings about being with foster carers, who are very nice, because mum has difficulties. If he has addiction to mental health problems, he might even be a bit of a carer for his mum, so he may have a sense of responsibility and guilt about not being with her. And similarly, he may have ended up having caring responsibilities for his little brother as well as missing him as a sibling.

Ness:

And then there's that complexity of his dad's death, if he doesn't understand that his dad had a drug addiction and he's died of a drugs overdose. How do you talk to a 12 year old boy about this profound loss? So, sharon, I know I haven't put you just on the spot. We have been talking about this young boy and I'm just wondering how you might approach this case if this boy was with your foster family.

Sharon:

Yeah, well, as Ness said, we had a chance to discuss this and have a think about how to help a child like this who, as I said, isn't atypical of some of the children we are working with and some of the issues that come up. So we use a model called the narrative model, which was developed by some local experts, I suppose in the field, who were working with children in care. It was piloted by someone called William Coleman and essentially it's just a way of giving that life story work to children and helping them to understand what has happened in their life to date. Um, and especially during that period of uncertainty when children first come into care, that's one of the times when we have to think about what does this child understand, about why he is in care? And and I suppose what they had said is originally they had, they had become aware that so many children come into care and don't understand why they are in care.

Sharon:

So many children blame themselves or think that somehow it was their fault and, like there's been children who said they came into care because they had ADHD or it could be because their mum was sick and could be something like their mum was just working too hard. They're moving house, their mum was having a baby, and there's so many reasons that children make up in their own head of why they came into care which are so far from the truth, and and perhaps to us as adults it's very obvious why they come into care. But they maybe don't understand that and attribute blame to themselves. And you know, blake could be thinking that you know, did I cause my mum's problems? Was my mum upset because of me? Because looking after me was hard? We don't know what's going on in his head and so, essentially, it's really important that we would meet with him and try and help him to understand that. So we already know he's been asking questions and he's talking about wanting to go home to his family, about home to his mum. He's wondering whether he's going to go back home, and he's asked his carers about living with his brother, and so that's obviously a big loss for him.

Sharon:

We can guess, given their ages, that his brother was just a wee baby when they were brought into care and so he spent most of his life apart from his brother, and which is very sad, and we don't know that. You know his early months. He could have been helping care for his brother and we don't know whether he may have went into school. Sometimes children go into school and talk about what's happening at home and and that can actually flag that there's issues. So you know, for some kids they can blame themselves that they have actually maybe nearly triggered social services investigations because they've rightly gone in and said about what's happening at home and so there's so much that can go on in the children's heads that we work with. So the narrative model is essentially giving space for children first of all to ask any questions that they have and then for their field social worker and to go and read through the files, try and get all the information for them and put together some information for them around the reason.

Ness:

Sharon, let me interrupt, sorry. What does that look like? So a child, say Blake, is 12, and he has a bunch of questions we're aware of, he might have brought them up with his foster carers, and his foster carers are rightly going to say to you, the supervising social worker we're not sure what to say to our lovely foster child Blake and then, with the foster carers, or with you or the child's social worker, ask Blake to write down his questions. Would they have a conversation?

Sharon:

Yeah, there's different ways of doing it, but usually the main thing we would say to our foster carers, if the child is asking questions like around their care plan or what's going to happen to them in terms of going home or the future, we encourage the carers essentially just to sit with those questions and say something like that's a brilliant question. Blake, we can see you're worried about that. We can understand that. We'll ask your social worker about it when your social worker visits. So we would really try and redirect foster carers to the social worker, so to sort of to take off the pressure from the foster carers and to make sure that the really to make sure that the messages that are given to Blake are the right messages and that he's not getting confused, maybe with more than one person explaining things to him. So, yeah, sometimes for children we would, we would encourage them to write it down. Some children would have like a wee notebook, um, where children have a lot of questions, um of things they can write down that they're wondering about, and really I find for a lot of kids there's maybe one or two key questions that they ask. It could be will I go home to mum, will I go home to my brother or what happened to my dad. Usually, usually it's a couple of key questions and those nearly form then the basis for the narrative. So you're sort of starting with the questions that the children are asking and if they are asking questions like that and trying to help them answer that, and quite often once the piece of work is done they may have more questions. So this isn't a one-off piece of work and we might then have to go back and do some more work and answer some more questions. And the most important thing really is that the information is accurate and, as Graeme said earlier, that it's age appropriate. So these are really difficult issues to deal with.

Sharon:

But I think what's important to remember is that when, for example, we have to talk to Blake about his mum struggling with addiction and mental health, blake has already lived through that, so this is not a surprise for him. So we're not necessarily giving him new information, but we're helping to validate what he's already been through and explain to him that your mum has struggled with that and this has been really hard, and helping children to understand that this is not their fault, it's not your fault. You know when we would say quite clear messages like it's not your fault that your mum has a drug addiction, and very clear messaging for the children. And also messages like it wasn't okay that your mum didn't look after you, that your mum didn't send you to school or didn't give you enough food. I am trying to give them clear messages about what is and isn't okay and then that's helping him to understand. Okay, so my mum couldn't take me, for example. My mum couldn't take me to school every day because she struggled with her addictions, but now I can see my foster care is taking me to school every day, so it's starting to help them understand what, what is the right sort of parenting and why they had to come into care and that it wasn't their fault, which is one of the the key messages.

Sharon:

And so, and then in terms of his dad and you know we've had like we have had a few cases sadly in in our service where children have lost parents and especially when we're working with with children where there are addictions and mental health issues, sadly that does come up, and more than we would like it to, and again, it's so important that children understand what has happened to their parents, again in an age-appropriate way, and it could be saying something, something along the lines of you know, your daddy took too many drugs and his body stopped working and he died, and again using those clear messages.

Sharon:

Sometimes we would work alongside, like the bereavement team in Barnardo's, and they could also do a follow-up piece of work. If it was appropriate, we can refer out to them. But you know, we would also get some advice from them around messaging and you know, and explaining what drugs are at an age-appropriate level, helping children to understand, like, the difference even between prescription or non-prescription drugs we've done that sort of thing before in narratives and and really just help them have a basic understanding of what drugs are and making sure they they understand that. So it wouldn't be going into a lot of detail, but it's it's.

Ness:

It's quite basic really and and using language that the child will understand how do you manage something like the trickiness of the younger, the baby brother, whose care plan may end up being very different?

Ness:

to Blake's how? How do we talk about that?

Sharon:

I think at this stage, one of the things I think to be careful with is not overwhelming a child with a narrative. So maybe to keep the focus initially. Like I said, there's maybe a couple of questions. So, especially when the care plan isn't finalized yet, um, I think it would be some careful consideration and really these sorts of decisions are also made as a team. So you know, the child has their own field social worker, the foster carers I would be supervising social worker for the foster carers. So it would be to know everyone would get together, everyone that's involved with the child and think about what are the key messages, and maybe not always necessarily mentioning adoption until we're further down and know that's happening and if that's not finalised yet.

Sharon:

But what we could focus on is saying we don't know yet and sitting with that uncertainty, uncertainty which can be really tricky because we want to tell children this is what's going to happen. But what we would try and focus on is the fact that this is why you're not with mummy now. You're being looked after here and calm is being looked after there, validating that I know this is really hard, you're not with him, you must really miss him and just really validating how difficult this is for him, but then also pointing out that the final decision needs to be made by a judge around what's going to happen. So basically explaining to him what's happening. Now that your mummy's maybe getting this help, we would explain to children your mum is doing this, this and this Not the details, but someone's trying to help your mom with their addictions and with her mental health and see if she can get help for that and see if that can get better and if that happens you might be able to go home. But if she's struggling too much, do you know it's not okay for her not to be able to look after you in that right way. It's not okay for her not to send you to school.

Sharon:

Those examples, and then explaining why then, do you know the decision might be made that he might not be able to go home to mum and nearly being okay with that uncertainty, um, and you know, we would explain to children sort of in a basic way around the social services system and how that the judge has the final say.

Sharon:

We would quite often describe the judge as like the wise old eye who makes the decision, um, and at that point then we will know what will happen um to him and Callum, um.

Sharon:

So it's more trying to explain what's happening right now, um, and then at the point, essentially, then, if the care plan was finalized and we knew then that Callum was going to be adopted, then we would probably do a separate narrative just about that and explain to him um, you know that his wee brother's going to be adopted, um, he's not going to understand the complexities of that as a 12 year old but as best we can in an age-appropriate way, we can try and explain that he's going to somebody who's adopted, that's going to be his forever home, and just sit with.

Sharon:

That being difficult really, I think is one of the main things. We can't just make it better. We have to give the children some space to process that and to know that this is really hard and that's okay. We'll be with you in this and maybe helping him understand that he still get to see him. You know that once we maybe have an idea of contact arrangements, we could talk about what that will look like for him. Um, but it is tricky having these sorts of conversations with kids. It really is, um, but it's partly maybe explaining the reasons why decisions have been made, helping them understand it, um, and just sitting in that difficulty with them, just knowing they're not alone in it yeah, absolutely.

Ness:

I think I guess what I'm hearing you say, the sort of the sort of key takeaways are. You know, it's pulling together the facts and deciding what the most important bits of information are at this time and not overwhelming the child and conveying that information as honestly as possible in an age appropriate way. And also sitting with the discomfort of pain and loss because I saw Emma smiling there, because I know she was also probably thinking that being able to sit with the unknown, the not knowing, which is really really really difficult to do, but sometimes that's what we have to do there was one thing I was sitting with the feeling of a child coming to terms and understanding that a parent has died and the concept and the theme of death and dependent on the child's sort of developmental stages to actually comprehend what that means, and I think you explained it so very well.

Emma:

Um, sharing about that validation of you know it's okay if you're feeling sad, confused or angry, and if you have other questions about this, I mean it's perfect, so I'll stop rambling, yeah well, um, yeah, we, it's.

Sharon:

It's helpful having other Barnardo's services that we can get. You know that are that do have expertise in different areas and you know we've worked alongside, for example, the bereavement team, like I've seen before, to try and get the wording right for, yeah, as you say, children to understand what that really means, and obviously it depends on their age and stage. So we're always taking the lead from the foster carers too, so we write this down for the children that they can keep it and the foster carers will see it beforehand, and it's quite useful just to get the foster carers to read it and make sure, even you know, the children are going to understand that the language is the right sort of language for the child and that it's not too simple but not too difficult, just the right balance, you know. And for younger children, we'd put in like pictures and things like that to make it a wee bit um, just more child-friendly and um did we lose you a bit, sharon.

Sharon:

I was just saying, for, like younger children we would use like pictures as well and just to make it a bit more interactive and more interesting for younger children as well. And again, it just is another way of doing that narrative and then they can keep it and refer back to it because it is a lot to take in. But then they can look at it again and it will always be sort of kept safe for them and there'll be a copy on their file too.

Ness:

Thank you to Emma and Sharon for sharing their expertise. It's been so interesting. Thanks for listening to this episode of Barnardo's Fostering and Adoption NI podcast. To learn more about fostering and adoption with us, search for Barnardo's online or find the link in our program description. We love to hear from you your thoughts, questions or future topic requests. To do so, you can contact us at bfani at bernardosorguk. You will find our email address also in the show notes.