#43: Whose Truth Becomes A Child’s Story? Therapeutic Life Story Work, With Professor Richard Rose

Kids in care don’t just wonder where they lived. They wonder why it happened and far too often they land on the most painful answer: it must have been my fault. I’m joined by Professor Richard Rose, founder of Therapeutic Life Story Work International, to talk about how trauma-informed storytelling can turn confusion, shame and “unknowns” into a narrative a child can actually live with.

We unpack what makes Therapeutic Life Story Work different from a traditional life story book. Richard explains why files and court documents are rarely “the truth”, how they’re shaped by pressure and perspective, and why we need to gather real human stories from the people who journeyed with the child, including birth parents and previous carers, when it’s safe and respectful to do so. He shares the Rose Model, starting with information banking and eco mapping, then moving into relationship-led direct work that keeps the child’s voice at the centre.

We also get practical about what helps placements hold. We talk attachment, behaviour as communication, and why understanding the past can reduce fear in the present. Richard describes how to avoid doing harm when talking about trauma, what “editor-in-chief” ownership looks like for children creating their own story, and when the work should pause or adapt, including using tools like All About Me. We finish with Richard’s training focus through Thea, the Trauma Health Education International Academy, and what carers need to stay steady in the face of vicarious trauma.

Richard's Bio:

Richard is the Director and Founder of Therapeutic Life Story Work International (TLSWi). TLSWi provides consultancy and training on Therapeutic Life Story Work and working with 'hard to reach' children and adolescents, and develops academic training programmes in the UK and Internationally. TLSW is the only evidenced based Life Story Model in the World, TLSWi also is the professional body for Therapeutic Life Story Work and engages in research, supervision and professional development of all members. Recently, Richard has founded THEiA, designed to provide funded training to all carers in the UK, and across the world, from May 2025. THEiA is also going to offer cost effective training for Trauma, Health and Education colleagues to support their work with traumatised children and their families.
 
Richard has worked with traumatised children and families since he was 17 years old, and in that time has been shaped by those he has journeyed with over the last 43 years. He qualified in Social Work in 1989 and since then worked in the UK in local authority child protection and the highly regarded residential therapeutic treatment agency SACCS, including four years as the Clinical Practice Director of the Mary Walsh Institute. 
  
Richard is the author of four books, as well as research and guest chapters in publications such as Children in Care and various papers within University Press. 

Links:

Richard's Website: https://tlswi.com/

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheSecureStartPodcast
Podcast Blog Site: https://thesecurestartpodcast.com/

Disclaimer: Information reported by guests of this podcast is assumed to be accurate as stated. Podcast owner Colby Pearce is not responsible for any error of facts presented by podcast guests. In addition, unless otherwise specified, opinions expressed by guests of this podcast may not reflect those of the podcast owner, Colby Pearce. Finally, all references to case examples are anonymised to the extent that the actual case could not be identified, or are fictional but based on real-life examples for illustrative purposes, or have client consent to talk about in an educative con

Transcript

Opening And Why Stories Matter

Colby 0:00

Welcome to the Secure Start podcast brought to you by the Secure Start Aura apps supporting trauma-informed care and practice at home and in school.

Richard 0:17

Um, it wasn't really a case of them not knowing where they lived or not knowing uh about you know their family of origin specifically. The biggest problem was why, and the other big problem was it was my fault. So, what makes it therapeutic really is that we have a high uh kind of concentration of meaning and exploration. In the therapeutic nature of this work, we follow you know that notion of let's hear the child's story first before we share what we know. And I think that's the issue for us. We we are wanting to help young people and adults to have a second look at the the kind of events of their world, but not just from their internal uh kind of view, but from those also that acted with them during their journey. My story work is often something written for a child, so the actual main um character of that story does not have their voice in the story. So we owe it to our children, young people, to do our best to information back as well as we can. A lot of our children um are defined by the unknown or the unresolved past. So my job is to not necessarily resolve that past, but make that past much more uh accessible. And once you know something, actually it takes away the imagination of it. It takes away the horror sometimes, it takes away the kind of feeling of inadequacy because we now know it. Welcome to the Secure Start Podcast.

Country Acknowledgement And Guest Intro

Colby 1:56

I'm Colby Pierce, and joining me for this episode is a familiar name with an international reach. Before I begin this episode, I'd just like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands that I come to you from, the Ghana people of the Adelaide Plains, and acknowledge the continuing connection the living Ghana people feel to land, waters, culture, and community. I'd also like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging. My guest this episode is Professor Richard Rose. Richard is the director and founder of Therapeutic Life Story Work International. Therapeutic Life Story Work International provides consultancy and training on therapeutic life story work, working with hard-to-reach children and adolescents, and develops academic training programs in the UK and internationally. Therapeutic Life Story Work International also engages in research, supervision, and professional development of all members. Recently, Richard founded Theatre, designed to provide funded training to all carers in the UK and across the world from May 2025. Theatre will also offer cost-effective training for trauma, health, and education colleagues to support their work with traumatized children and their families. Richard has worked with traumatized children and families since he was 17 years old, and in that time has been shaped by those he has journeyed with over the last 43 years. He qualified in social work in 1989 and since then worked in the UK and local authority child protection and from 1997 with the highly regarded residential therapeutic treatment agency SACs, including four years as the clinical practice director of the Mary Walsh Institute. Throughout his career, Richard has worked with children and families in out-of-home care and with birth family placements, with the aim of enabling these placements to become healthy and nurturing. Richard is a regular visitor to Australia, where he is an adjunct associate professor of social work and social policy at La Trobe University and honorary associate of the Berry Street Organization. He is also a regular visitor to the United States of America, where he has presented for the Portland State University and currently for the Department of Human Services in Oregon and its adoption services. Richard is the author of four books as well as research and guest chapters in publications such as Children in Care and various papers within University Press. Well, welcome, Richard, to the Secure Start Podcast. Really pleased to have you here. Have heard uh your name and heard about your work um over well, more than a decade it would be uh working in this space. So welcome.

Richard 5:34

Thank you very much, Colby. It's lovely to be invited to talk with you today. Um and in fact, um next year is my 30th year of doing therapeutic life story work. So it's been quite a big journey, but the last 10 years where it's really got to make the difference, I hoped it would do.

From Life Story Books To Therapy

Colby 5:49

Yeah, I think I I probably first learned or first heard of it, yeah, in you know probably in the area of 15 odd years ago, I'd have to say. So um, yeah, people were talking about it. I mean, the concept of life story work, of course, has been known, has been f familiar to me for longer. And uh I probably pricked my ears up at, you know, when someone talked about therapeutic life story uh work um in a context where I was you know more used to hearing about life story work. So um maybe if we just start at the start there, if you're happy to talk about how you um you developed therapeutic life story work, and perhaps uh uh the and this would be leading into the second question that I was going to ask you, but which is around how it it is you how it is therapeutic, how it is distinguished from, I guess, the you know what people uh have conventionally known as a life story book.

Richard 6:58

Of course. Um so for me, I mean, the start of the journey, um I was a child protection worker, um, a social worker in a local team in England, and um we were called the specials um because all we did was to investigate potential child protection issues. Uh and my uh skill in the in the latter part of that was video interviewing children. Uh so I would video interview children on on tape. Um, and I loved that job, it was great, and I was in my own little bubble. Um, and then as all things, um, local authorities departments like to shift things around a little bit, and I got shifted around a little bit and became a child protection senior social worker. Uh, and um it didn't suit me at all. And I remember um one of my first referrals that came through to me, instead of looking at what the client needed and what the children would have benefited from, I was too busy looking behind them to see what they've been up to. Um, and that's that investigative head that was um you know uh obscuring my kind of more open approach, a holistic approach. So I made a decision to leave, uh, and it's the only reason I left social care. Um, and that was after starting at 17 working in a children's home. So it was quite a long journey already, really, by that point. Uh so in 1997, um, I was able to get a job in a residential organization that at the time was called SACS, and SACS was very well regarded. It was uh a sexual abuse child consultancy service, and we uh were looking after young people uh between the age of four up to twelve on entry and 15 when hopefully we did what we needed to do, so after three years, um, and it was a program of care, although residential, which included life story work. But nobody knew what life story work was, so that was that was why I was brought in to uh start life story. Now I had not really much idea about what that was, um, but when I was a student social worker learning my craft, I was uh very, very lucky to be placed in a drug rehabilitation center where they were doing um history work with those adults that sadly had a long uh a journey of of um of hurt really by the drugs and stuff that had you know overwhelmed them. And I really enjoyed that notion of hearing the stories. And what was quickly apparent to me as a student social work uh was how similar the stories were, you know, uh and most of those stories involved some form of child abuse, some kind of uh trauma that, as Gabor Mate would say, has just you know been unresolved residue for many people, and certainly for the people I was working with. So I thought when I got this new opportunity, you know, it was again probably 12 years after I qualified, um, and I thought, oh, that's what we can do. So that was my initial. Um we started with uh 32 children that we had in our organization, and by 2013 we had 72 children. Um, but the unique selling area of this, I know that's an interesting word to use or words to use in childcare, but unfortunately, when you are uh offering a service, you have to make yourself unique in order to get the uh investment. And the unique bit was the life story work. But when it started, obviously I read Foulberg, I read all about Edith Nichols' work, uh Jane Asher's work, uh, and Ryan Walker's work, and that was really life story. Uh and life story gets called life history, life journey, life story. Um, and so I kind of looked at that for a while and I just thought with the children we were looking after, um, it wasn't really a case of them not knowing where they lived or not knowing uh about you know their family of origin specifically. The biggest problem was why, and the other big problem was it was my fault. Yeah, and so what I wanted to do was to try and do something different, which was to provide something that would help the young person to make sense of their story, but also to look at the whys, the who's the where's the hows, to look at people's stories that journeyed with them. So, what it makes it therapeutic, really, is that we have a uh a high uh kind of concentration of meaning and exploration. So it's not just you lived here and you moved to this place, and it was because your carer, you know, found it difficult to look after you. It's actually, well, what did the carer actually find difficult? What was it that people did about that? What do you think people could have done about that? Then what happened next to you, and now do you make sense of that? Can we connect the two or the three or the four, depending obviously on that journey? The other side of the therapeutic, of course, was about healing. And so many children that I've worked with as a uh child protection worker and I worked as a residential worker, um, like many of us really, if we don't really understand something, we often blame ourselves. Um, and I had not not, you know, only about a year ago now, I had a nine-year-old boy that said to me, Um, Richard, I'm in care and my sisters are in care because I was born. And so I wrote on wallpaper, which is what we use to write everything down. Um, I wrote on the wallpaper, I told Richard, I'm in care, and my sisters are in care because I was born. So by writing, I told Richard, I'm not agreeing with him, I'm just explaining that I've heard him. Um, and he goes on to say something, which is quite logical. I mean, what he said was social workers, police, and health visitors weren't involved in my my life, uh, my children, sorry, my sister's life or my mum and dad's life. But when I was born, that's when they got involved in my life. And if I hadn't been born, they wouldn't have come to my house. And if they hadn't come to my house, they wouldn't have seen the neglect. And if they hadn't come to my house, then my mum and dad wouldn't have got so angry with each other, and my sisters would still live at home. And it all makes a logic, you know. And if you did life story work and you piece together, there's your logic. Um, so in the therapeutic nature of this work, we follow, you know, that notion of let's hear the child's story first before we share what we know. So if you're like Faulberg in 2015, oh no, 2012 said, um, if you really want to work with children, hear their story before you tell them. Um, if you're like Kierkegaard, all the way back to 1859, uh, sorry, 1849, Kierkegaard would say, you know, um, if you really want to help someone, then you have to find out where they're at. You have to then find out more than they know about themselves, and then you must hear their story before you continue. And of course, people we we are very much involved with, like Bruce Perry would say, you know, we need the child's narrative at the center of all we do. So having heard his narrative, I was then able to say to him, Well, you know, I've gone away and I've met with, or I've interviewed, or I've, you know, um recorded with uh your parents. And I met with your mum of origin, and your mum has told me that when she um first met your dad, she was 16 years old, and your dad was 36 years old, and he was a maintenance man that worked in the children's home, fixing the doors and the windows because they were often broken. Um, and they ran away together, and everybody was not happy about this. And your mum remembers that people were very angry, people were very, you know, kind of uh worried, but she loved your dad and she wanted to be with your dad. And she remembers that when she was first with your dad, he used to have lots and lots of worries around alcohol, and he used to drink lots of alcohol, and the alcohol would sometimes mean that he would get very cross, and sometimes as getting as he got cross, he would hurt mum. And mum remembers having to go to the hospital sometimes, and mum remembers having to go to the police station, and mum remembers dad having to go to the police station. And this little boy was listening to this as we were writing it down, uh, and he looked at his carer because he always worked tripartite, and um he looked at me, and then he turned around and he said, Are you telling me that my mum and dad were fighting hurting each other before my sisters were born? Before I was born, and I just looked at him and said, Well, actually, I'm not telling you that. This is what your mum's telling us. And he looked at his care and said, So it wasn't my fault. And I think that's the issue for us. We we are wanting to help young people and adults to uh have a second look at the the the kind of events of their world, but not just from their internal uh kind of view, but from those also that acted with them during their journey. And if we can find a way that children can or adults can understand why, who, where, what, how, and when, we'll make a big difference. Um, and um, you know, we we very rare very often have young people say to us um things like, so it's not my fault, or I think I like me, or actually it must be really tough for my mum and dad, but it doesn't have to be tough for me. So I think it's those uh kind of unique ways we work that um you know make make this uh very successful, and it and it is very successful. We we have some lovely research that supports that now from uh Deacon University in Melbourne as an example.

Colby 16:28

And uh you've referenced other people that are in the history of the children, uh including birth parents, for example. I mean, how how do you access that that information and tell us a little bit about what goes into building that picture for the children?

The Rose Model Information Banking

Richard 16:44

Sure. So the therapy life story work, uh the model that we use, we just now refer to as the Rose model, and I've I've got over it now, Colby, but at the beginning I wasn't that happy. Those people that know me well know that I'm um fairly um grounded. I I have a wife, maybe like yourself, that keeps me where I need to be. Um, and um so at the end of the day, you know, kind of uh this Rose model that we work uh is really uh very systemic, it's very uh kind of grounded in its approach, uh, and it is a step-by-step. So basically, we have three particular um tasks. The first task is information gathering. So we refer to this as information banking. So we shouldn't ever work with a hurt person without understanding their story, without understanding their history. Um, and that means that we have to make the effort to collate uh what we can. So the way that we do this is that we we get a substantive report. So it might be uh an adoption report, it might be a uh report from the court, it might be a report of um, you know, a current summary. We break that down into bite-sized chunks like you would eat an elephant, and then we think of each chunk individually and ask ourselves what would we need to know that would help us make sense of this particular information? So that might mean that you know it's about let's say um mum and dad um splitting up. That might be that box. So we'd want to know well, what led to that um challenge, what was happening for mum, what was happening for dad, how does that impact on those around the family? Um, and then we would also, with those questions we raise, plot them literally on a big eco map, like a map with a kind of name of the child in the middle and all these spider legs coming out with all the people and all the paperwork around them. And we literally attack, attach sorry, each question to the line that leads to the individual or the paperwork. And then what I do is I either go and see that person, uh, I invite the opportunity to zoom or to have a telephone call or to write, and I gather up the paperwork, and then through that notion, we are able then to get real-time, uh, we get memories, we get um memorabilia, like for instance, photographs for shoes, uh, lots of cultural um uh elements. So if we're working with people from different cultures, we want to make sure that we honor the culture. So we would be talking about um important parts of their culture that we can bring back with us. There may be ceremonies, there may be belief systems, there may be, you know, things that are really important, like dream time, etc. etc. We bring those back, but not for us, but as they are shared with us, we can say to the young person or adult, I met with your um your auntie, and your auntie remembers looking after you when you were 10. And when you were 10, you were full of questions and you were full of interesting things. And what you did was with your auntie, you produced a scrapbook all about you. We've got that scrapbook, it's that kind of thing. So uh if you look at it in a way um which I I refer to as gathering up the fragments of our children's lives. Um, and uh when I first got the job back in 1997 uh for Sachs, my boss at the time said to me, I don't know how you're going to do it, but I know what I want you to do. So my instructions were very simple um go out, gather up the broken shards of children's worlds, bring them all back into one place, make sense of them, and then share that with the child and the carer. Um, and in a way, we haven't really changed too much, but we now call it um, you know, making sense of fragmented lives. So, what we're now saying is we can't really make sense of a young person unless we have all those parts of the young people have uh left behind back into the same place. So that's the first part. Um, and that might mean that we see birth parents, we might see previous carers, we might uh look at files, we might go to court and ask to uh see court bundles. Um, we have to be mindful of the data protection, we have to be mindful of uh people's rights and responsibilities. Uh, and so we are very careful and very um what's the word I would use, respectful. Um, I might, for instance, uh want to see a mum of a child and and mum is not in a place where she could see me in a way that would be in her best interest, we wouldn't go see mum. Uh, I might be in a situation where I might be interviewing a dad uh and dad becomes overwhelmed. Uh, I wouldn't, you know, want to take advantage of that, or I wouldn't want to in any way uh you know become unprofessional with that. So we would stop the interview and so on and so on. And a bit like you know, when you do these these uh interviews, Colby, you know, you you make sure that people have a right to um ensure what they said is okay. Um, we do the same on interview adults. We will send back to them what we believe they've told us, and then hopefully come back and say, That's right, or you got that wrong, or I don't want to share that. Um, so there is a Of autonomy to the interviewee as much as there is for the young person we work with. The other problem we have, of course, when we information gather is um issues of privacy. Um, and again, you know, if I have a parent that says, I do not want you to tell this child this, I can't tell that child that. Um, if it's something that's really important, then I will do all I can to persuade the young the uh information giver the importance of it. So, as an example, uh sadly, many of our young people may have been born as a result of their mother's uh own abuse, whether that be rape or whether that be other things within a relationship. And the mother might not want us to tell their young person that that's how they came into the world. But the young person may have real issues around bonding, real issues around um that relational context between mum, that knowing that this happened might help that child to understand, you know, where mum is you know kind of coming from. So you've got this difficult thing of whose story is whose story. Again, what we do is we try to negotiate, we try to um make sense of what we might share. So very often I'll go back to an interviewee and say, This is how I'm going to explain this to the young person. Are you okay with this? So it's it's full of respect, it's full of value, it's full of um hopefully, you know, thinking of the best interest, not just of the child, but of all those that we come to.

Colby 23:25

Yes.

Richard 23:26

So that's the first part of the of the intervention. It's uh a very, very important part. Um, but it means we have evidence, but we also have statements, we have words, we have, you know, kind of uh physical things all in one place where we can then make sense.

Colby 23:42

Do you mind if I just jump in there, Richard? Because it there's a number of things that have come up while for me while you've been talking, and um from my own work in this in this area for a very long time. I've got a question. I'm wondering if you could in a moment um uh I guess share with us what has been the ex the general experience and reaction of birth parents in particular, but other people involved in the history of children, uh a child's life, of going through this process. But before I get you to answer that, I just wanted to say this, which which is very early in my career as a practicing clinical psychologist in this space, I learned the value of not relying on what's in the documentation.

Richard 24:33

Absolutely.

Colby 24:34

Yeah, be uh I I remember and I I yeah so for example, I might be asked to do a case review uh and and express an opinion based on um based on what what is in the documentation, uh, and then say sometime later, maybe a year later, I'm asked to do a full assessment. And you know, and and I found that I could come to a completely different conclusion based on on what is in the case notes of a child versus when I actually go and speak to the people. And and that was very early in my career, and probably you know, along the way, one of the best things that ever happened in in my career was to be able to uh rely less on what's in the paperwork. And and and people will sorry, I did people will often say birth parents and others will often say that they were not fairly represented in the in the paperwork. So that got me thinking, you know, what has been your your ex your experience and the people who follow this uh model's experience generally of speaking to birth parents and others?

Richard 25:50

Yeah, so we if we kind of stick with that first part of information gathering, um, I I can't agree with you more about what you said about files, but you know, I have to put my own hand up. Um when I was a social worker, um child protection, um I was renowned for being uh a get up and go social worker. Um I was not very good at writing and I was not very good at recording. Um and um, you know, I'm I'm I'm old now, so I could I could probably get away with this. I would have three colours in my drawer, and when anybody was coming to inspect my files, I quickly read my wrote up my files. Now there's there's an admittance of very poor practice, but um I could give you lots of reasons why, but we won't go down there. It was not good, and and you know, I own that. Um, but also, you know, because social workers who are very much the the authors of files, really, um, because they have so much pressure on them, because they are a they are really at the beck and call of a liquid diary, all the best intentions of the world, um, you know, recording is the lowest. Um, now, years ago when I first practiced, we would have support in files and we would have our uh administration teams, it would, you know, our clerks that would be next to us. And I, you know, I'm awful when I say this. I used to have somebody that would put everything in my files for me, and I would just sit with them for an hour, and that was fantastic. Um, anyway, enough of my poor practice. The the really issue is that um I learned a long, long time ago that um we all have this notion of explicit memory, um, and that you know, what we might believe today, once we set it out into the world and then repackage it back in, is slightly different. Uh, and so many people write in files with values and and you know, kind of different uh kind of viewpoints and different uh you know professional and social uh experiences, that they will write the files in the way that they see the files. And because we're in a system where it's very rare for a child to have just one social worker or one person written in their files, when you read a file from beginning to end, it is very, very confusing. So, although we take that information and we do value that information and it does give us, you know, um an understanding of the reasons why action was taken. Is it the truth? Well, there's no such thing as truth. Is it a perception? Yes. And so if it's a perception, we owe it to that young person to get other perceptions. Um, and like you were saying, with with a mum, for instance, if you interview a mum several years after a child sadly might have been removed from her, she will not have the same memory of what happened when the child was removed to the memory she now has because she has to live with that memory. And so we we do have uh situations, understandably, where people will have a memory of something that may well be uh kind of shaped by the years that have passed. Nonetheless, they have a story. Uh, and often I found that those stories that I get from the carers of children and from the parents of children and those that have journeyed with children are far more reliable than what I found in a file. Um, so I like you, I I do court I do court reports every now and then on what we call therapeutic needs assessments. And I've been asked to do paper reviews, and I won't do them because you don't get, as you said yourself, Colby, you don't get a flavor of the the the kind of holistic, you get a singular view. And if I could just link that back to life story work, because I know today it's also about the difference between life story work and therapeutic life story work. Life story work is often something written for a child, so the actual main um character of that story does not have their voice in the story. Um, and in in the UK, we are mandated to do life story work with children in care, quite rightly. But the way that most people do that is by providing a story, and sadly, it's just another story on top of countless other stories that didn't actually say to that child, and what do you think and what do you feel, and what does that mean for you? Uh and in court reports, we should do exactly the same. We should go and speak to the actors in the story and say, help me to understand. Um, and he said, she said, so no problem, because many times I say to my child, my children, your dad said this, your mum said this, your social worker said this, the child says, but they can't all be telling the truth. And I say, actually, none of them are telling the truth. What they're telling is their perception, what they believe to be what happened. And your job and my job is to try to make sense of it. And if we can, that's great. And if we can't, we can just honour everybody's view, but we'll come out with our own. And that's kind of how we would do it.

Colby 30:55

Yeah, yeah. And the other thing is agency imperatives as well get very much mixed into what I guess comes out in court documents. I mean, no agency's gonna go into court without having a good uh case, developing a good case formulation for taking the action that they do. So yeah, there's there's all things.

Richard 31:20

Yeah, but you could put that a different way, Colby, and that's why that podcast, because we have this conversation, um, you could do a different way, which is that you know, when a parent goes to court, they have a solicitor telling them what they shouldn't say. Yes, um, because you know, of all the reasons that you know might spring to mind right now, when I go see a parent, there is no solicitor. And what we often hear is the things that they wish they could have said, and to be honest, a lot of those uh kind of wish I could have said would have made much more of a kind of difference if it had been aired at the time it was felt. Um, so again, I mean, you know, for me, um, as I own my own poor practice uh back in the day. Um, but I would also say, you know, that um if you sit with a young person and you're doing therapeutic life story work, you have no right to do that if you don't understand the history of that child and their journey, and you haven't gathered up the stories of those who've journeyed with them. Um, because all you're likely to do is to reaffirm something that maybe in time proves to be false. Um, I'll give you an example. We had this a long time ago now, but a young person, um, her file said um that mum was heavily pregnant, mum had a car crash, um, and she went to hospital. And the next thing in the files it says this child is born premature. Um, and if you haven't got any other information and you're writing a child's story, the chances are you're going to put in the story, mum was involved in a car crash, she was sent to hospital, and it was felt that you should be born early, and therefore there was a cesarean you were born early. Um, but when I got that information, I went back to mum and spoke to mum about this situation. Mum said to me, you know, I was in a relationship with somebody I wish I was in a relationship with, and the night before I was rushed to hospital, he beat me. Now, I would never have known that if I hadn't gone to see mum. It wouldn't have been necessarily any medical records, it would not necessarily have been in a social work record, but it's mum's story. Um, and actually, you know, for me, if I'd gone with the uh, you know, the one that makes sense, if you like, that kind of um assumed story, and that child goes home, which many of our young people do, even if it's just to be curious, and she says, Oh, I did life story with Richard Rose, and look at my life story book, Mummy, and I could have died if you weren't taken to hospital. And then Mummy says, That never happened. And if Mummy could prove that, which she probably will be able to, then the child thinks the rest of the book is probably a lie. So we owed it to our children, young people, to do our best to information bank as well as we can. And we we spend not time-wise three months, but we spent uh we spend up to three months hoping that all this information will come back from our various kind of um, you know, uh pieces of of uh work. And that fits nicely in our model because the second part of our model is the direct work with children, and the first six sessions, which take three months once every two weeks, is three months. And therefore, we get to know the child, we're hearing their story while things are coming in, and that means, of course, that we can start to piece together the holistic nature of this child's journey, um, and we can bear witness to their own understanding.

Healing With Birth Parents And Carers

Colby 34:42

Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's just sitting here uh listening to you talk about it, it's it's really incredible. And and the other thing that I the another thought that I was having was how potentially therapeutic it is for birth parents and others to be given that opportunity. Yeah.

Richard 35:07

Yeah. I mean, this is what we're doing now, and it's fantastic, Colby. So uh I've I work with two adults currently, um, but I've just finished working with an adult whose children and she uh were involved in a cult. Um, and um she wasn't called mum, she was called by her first name. Her children weren't her children, they were the children of the cult. Um, and uh the leader of the cult was that her husband. Um, and uh there was a big challenge, um, and the children come into care. Um, and I did some work with one of the young people, and then I've worked with the the mother, and she um is amazing, she is an amazing woman. What she's been through is incredibly amazing, and what we did there was exactly what I taught you about information gathering and then you know hearing her story, and she has to defend herself, she has to, you know, try to find a reason why things happen the way they happened. But if we do our job really well and we can start to, you know, um do that gebor mate, hearing, holding, and loving, you know, maybe we can help make more sense. And I'm really pleased to say that that that particular mom and that particular young person now have contact, whereas they had no contact for nine years. So we can we can make not only a difference to the young person, we can make a difference to the parent. So here in in the UK, I'm sure you have the same with Australia. We have various organizations within local authorities who are doing work with etch of care or parents where they've lost their children in the notion of lost to adoption or fostering. And they're doing work directly with the adult. Because if they then go on to have another young person, hopefully they will have that opportunity to reflect on their journey of their own and make those decisions and those um kind of life choices, which will enable them to feel much more able and much more confident in being a parent. In our work, uh, I say this often to my young people, um, I don't work really with the hurt child. I mean, yes, we are working with a hurt person, but I'm really working with the emerging adult. And if we can break the cycle by helping a young person grow into all that we can be, hopefully I'll make myself redundant eventually.

Colby 37:26

Redundancy is a concept that I use a lot to describe psychotherapy endeavors that you know that ultimately you you're always trying to work towards being redundant in the life of the child. Hopefully. Yes, yeah. Um that's the idea. Yeah, we do get sacked sometimes, and uh yeah, yeah. I wonder, I know I'm harping on about this a little bit, but I think it's really important to see the value in what birth families can give even if a child or or young person isn't living with them and and may not may not indeed still be safe to live with them. I do I do wonder about um the adults because we know that foster carers often also have their own care history. I do wonder whether, you know, some of the carers that you interview and and and the birth parents that uh are interviewed through this process, whether some of them just say, I wish someone had done gone through this kind of process with me.

Richard 38:34

Yeah, we we have this all the time. But it's also actually not just uh with our uh carers, our foster carers, for instance, and may have those their own experiences. Um and mums and dads, you know, it's also kinship carers, it's connected carers, residential carers sometimes. You know, most of us get into this world of you know um working with hurt um because either A, we've had our own experience of it, or B, that we feel that we are able, you know, to make a difference. It's a very, for me, a very vocational uh journey. Um, and it's always been led by what I hope to be from the heart, not necessarily anywhere else. Um and when you do any relational work, you know, the the context is relational. Um and so you're going to you know work with adults or the children you might be working with, and you're gonna see their vulnerabilities, you're gonna see their uh kind of challenges, you're gonna see their belief systems, or maybe the the effect of vicarious trauma, you know, on them. Um and it is also often the case when I'm working with you know a carer as an example, where the carer, you know, contacts me after a session and says, This happened to me, you know, um, and I've never been able to talk about it. And again, then you've got a challenge there because you know, can that adult still keep safe and help that young person? Or um are we going to be working with the adult through the young person? Um, so there has been many a time where I've done therapeutic life story work with the adult carer, then with the young person. Uh, and years ago, novely-wise, I had a uh son and a and a mum where um the son you know had been in care, mum had not been in care but had a horrendous um history. Um, and so the son and I did mum story together, and then when the son is in mum's womb in her story, we swapped over, and then mum and I did son's story. Um, and that kind of combination of understanding each other meant that we had this beautiful sharing life, sharing stories moment. And what I love about my job and what I see and why I still do it and love it, is that you know, you see in front of you a carpet of attachment being woven. Um, and for me, that's that's what we see. We see this uh notion of um connection. Um one of the things that I talk a lot about in my my kind of practice is is you know kind of attachment and the importance of understanding attachment, but it's also about how we can be, you know, um promoting that that attachment between children and carers, where for whatever reason it's it's it's got you know kind of lost. Um so our work, Colby, not many people uh you know, kind of connect this until they are involved with us. We we go into a family when it's a mess. We we don't wait for things to calm down, we go in when it's very, very heightened. Um so most of my work is with placements that are sadly breaking apart and going in there and holding and uh role modeling and uh you know, almost arbitrating between two forces and then bringing those forces together, and then suddenly the forces that are together now say to you, we don't need you anymore, is a wonderful kind of process. Uh, a girl once said to me uh through her wallpaper, Rich is a life story worker that came to help me think about my life and what happened to me when I was younger. He likes to help people get um, he likes to help children and their families get closer together. Um, he's done that really well, but I don't need him anymore. And that was it. She sacked me. Um, so you know, I think that um answering that question around the value of the work with a with a carer or with a parent uh is there. Um the other thing, of course, as you know, working with families, um, is that there's a lot of psychosocial education going on, uh, and carers are watching you, and they really want you to mess up so that you understand what it feels like, you know. Um, and also, of course, you want to be able to say to them, you know, hey, I can see this is really hard for you all. Um, so that kind of way in which we can, you know, almost do that um therapy without therapy. We can all almost sort of like not coach, but role model, if you see what I mean, using therapeutic language, you know, using a lot of, you know, Dan Hughes and Kim Gold would be happy here, using a lot of pace, you know. Um, but I think that the the bottom line, and it comes in in one of the things you talked about, um, you know, right at the beginning, uh, which led on to it's relational. Uh, and as Perry would say, you don't get trauma related trauma recovery without relationship.

Colby 43:32

I do it, it's fascinating. I my mind has is now gone a little bit to uh are there any kind of uh circumstances or situations where you probably wouldn't uh lead off with therapeutic life story work? And I'm in in particular, my mind is going to blend it in a little bit with what you've just said now. Um are there are there situations or circumstances? Where the adults in the life of the child would have would find it very difficult to be fully part of the process because it would be quite triggering of their own life history. Yeah, life story.

Behaviour As Communication Tools

Richard 44:14

So there are quite a few different reasons why we might not do it. So first of all, of course, the information gathering, it should always be done. Because so often we are firefighting and we don't look back at the lessons that we need to learn. So we're just repeating and repeating. So by just gathering up all that information, even if you don't go and do therapy life story work, it's valuable and also saves an awful lot of money. And I can't, I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've done information banking on a young person that's in a very expensive residential placement, uh, and they don't need to be there. Yeah. Um, but because they have this persona which is or we can't manage him, or he's settled, we'll leave him where he is, you know, isn't actually in his best interest. So I think what I would say is that that first part of our TLSW is a standalone as much as a part of the process. Um, and so I would recommend that. Um, but let's say we go to the second part, um, and that's the direct practice, which is for a therapy life story work is 18 sessions, so nine months of work, two one session for two weeks, but we also do a more about me, which is a shortened version, which actually deals with a particular issue a child might have. So if I go with the big one first, if if I meet with a young person and that young person tells me they don't want to do it, we don't do it. There's no point. Uh all we're doing is we're we're uh kind of working with something that that child is not able to manage, and therefore it will create more challenges than not. So what we recommend is what we recommend for every child in care, an all-about me book process, which is our our first part of our you know uh kind of shopping uh space. Uh All About Me, by the way, is is going all the way through Australia now. It's so lovely. We're seeing in McKillett, Berry Street, a Uniting Care, Benevolent Society. Um, and what it is, it's a template booklet, 20 pages in length. Uh, the carer sits with her child, they fill it in, uh, and then six months later they update it. And six months later, they update it. And as that child journeys through care, let's say they were two when they first come into care, and let's say, sake of argument, they leave at 18 years of age, they'll end up with 32 20-page booklets telling the story of their journey through care. So many of our children leave care with nothing. So this way they leave care with their story. And in England, our uh inspector service acknowledged this as life story work, and it is, it's beautiful, it's so easy. What's good about that bit very briefly is of course, if a child is in care at two and they, for whatever reason, need to live leave that family to live in another family, they now have a passport. And so they could share their four books with their new family, and their new family will know what they like, what they find difficult, what their favorite colour is, what their favorite food is, all these beautiful things. In Oregon, where we've been doing this for a long time now, carers do their own books, and in England and in uh other places, us workers, we do our own books. So again, when we meet children, we can say, This is me, and who are you? So that all about me, I would do if a child said no, I would do one with the carer for them in the hope it would say to them, but you are somebody, you are worthy, you are you know able and you're lovable, that kind of internal model stuff. So if it then went on to the big piece of work and a child would say, I don't want to do it, I won't do it. If we're working with a young person and they are um uh neurodivergent from what we would say in this in England, medium to high, so fairly impacted by that neurodivergence. We have not found a way yet to work with a child where there may be those challenges. We're still looking, we work with many organizations to try and find a way, but we have modeled medium to low, and in fact, we're doing some incredibly good work with young people that other people would have said there's no way they can do this. Uh, as an example, when I did about five years ago, sorry, six years ago, that child just started a university degree studying law. Yet when I first met him, I was told he can't manage. Um, so I think that I would say to anybody thinking of doing life story work, don't follow what it says on the tin, be curious, um, you know, be thoughtful, be uh kind of guided, but don't be led. Um, with carers, um, if we're working with older young people, they don't sometimes want their carers there. Um, but I always try and work with me, carer, and child, so they're like a tripartite. And when I say carer, I mean anybody. So I work with with three children who are in their birth family, never been in care before, so they're still carers in this notion. So you've got this tripartite. But sometimes children, young older children will say, I don't want my mum or my dad, or I don't want my carer here, because they want to talk about their family of origin. And it might be torn loyalties, it might be um they don't want to get their parents into trouble. Um, so what we do there is we might start with, okay, well, we'll begin the session all together, then you know, your carer can step out, we'll do some together, and then your parent, your carer can step back in again. Um, and that works very, very, very often. But because of the notion of trauma, you know, and because of people who you know carry their trauma, sometimes not understanding that, there are times where a carer might be overwhelmed by uh and at that point, if it impacts on the child's journey, we might stop and we might turn around and think, okay, what is the best way forward? So that might be to carry on the young person's journey without their carer present, or it might be that we do some work with the carer and then we come back to do work with the young person. Um and that does happen. So I remember one person I worked with many years ago now, uh, and halfway through the the programme, if you like, for what a better word for this intervention, um, she just said, I can't do this. I I I am I am um um full of that my children's trauma. And then she wasn't full of those children's trauma, it had unlocked her own trauma. Um, so again, with some psychological help from the fostering agency, with some care for the carer, and allowing the children to continue to work with me on their own meant that we were able then to, you know, um acknowledge and separate out a really important piece of work with the needs of the carer. Um, so that could be uh a process. Finally, the other way it could end, um, and that is that sometimes we do have situations where um we're doing our work, it's going very, very well, um, and then um we might have an issue where maybe uh a young person has been on social media with their family of origin uh and no one's aware of it, and then of course it comes up in the session, uh, and then at that point it might well be that we can't carry on the work we're doing because what we're doing is being compromised by what's happening in the external world. Uh, and so I will often go and see the external world if they'll see me to try to rescue that. But there are times where you know it's unfair to tell a child what you know has happened in their world when they're getting a completely different view from somewhere else. And at that point, we would probably go to what we call my story so far, uh, and we would stop. And then hopefully, once that's played itself out, which doesn't take that long really, the child then says, Can I now continue? Uh, and so we finished the work off at that point of at that point, so there's been a break. Um, it doesn't happen often, I have to be honest. In my in my own work, uh, I can only think of about four or five, probably in the last uh what well, I've been independent since 2011. So, what's that now? Um 15 years, 16 years. That's my bad, so I think 25. So about 15, 16 years, probably had about four or five that I've stopped um because of that, you know, and it's social media, um, and it's just not helpful for that young person. So we just call it the story so far. So those would be the reason we think we would not finish. But I have to say that you know, um the majority of young people and their carers, once we get into the direct practice, once they see, you know, the story and once they understand what their young person has experienced, once they see how that young person feels the world is shaped around them, carers will say to me, I never knew that he thought it was his fault, or do you know how much pain that my child's holding? And we'll do uh little tools like behavior trees, which actually are helping carers and children understand that how we behave is communicating, you know, how we're traveling, and how we're traveling is defined by the past. So if we can understand the past, we won't need to worry about our behaviors because those that aren't useful to us will fall away. And I also have this little thing called ghosts and monsters, which is probably too much to talk about on a podcast. But a lot of our children uh are defined by the unknown or the unresolved past. So my job is to not necessarily resolve that past, but make that past much more uh accessible. Uh, and then we can say, does it still does it still you know sit with you? Um finally, on that, in the direct practice, you know, we often we work with children who have extreme behaviors. Uh a girl that I used to work with, I've written about a few times now, um, she was terribly hurt by her family of origin. Um, but what she learned was that when she acted in the way that she'd been hurt, adults around her would get very worried, would get very scared. Um, and so if she was, you know, sort of sexually active, then everybody would go, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Um, and um when she was in a placement I was working with her, it was her seventh placement, uh, sorry, eighth placement, and she's only like six, almost six. Um, and um the carer brings back a friend to for a cup of tea, and this girl, you know, makes a beeline to this friend and starts being very sexual with them. Um and the carer is saying, I just can't do this anymore. This child cannot live with me anymore, you know, I can't, you know, have this. And uh by doing the tree, by saying, Well, look, let's look at these behaviors she has, include the sexualized behaviors. Now let's look at her past. And I help the carer see that actually what this child is doing is very, very clever. She has this adult threat in her world, she has to get rid of it. And the one thing she's got that might drive this person out of her house is this overt behavior. Because most people, you know, if you've got a six-year-old trying to touch you or grab you or show you whatever, you're gonna get overwhelmed quite quickly if you're healthy and you'll get out. And if you get out, the threat's gone. I'm now safe with mummy and nobody can hurt me. And the carriage looked at me and she said, I want to say you're wrong, but you're not wrong. I can see this now. So how do I do this? And I said, Well, you know, you need to look at that concept of your little girl and how she sees her world. Um, and so we talk about Fonague, or we talk about, you know, Bentovium, where they they talk a lot about, you know, you and I, for instance, when we do our assessments, we do our professional job, and then we need to stand in the shoes of our children or our carers and think, what's the world look like from your view? How is it that you see what's going on? How do you understand this? Um, and I think in life story work, you know, um, we don't have that, but in therapeutic life story work, that drives our practice. You know, how is this seen by you? How would I be if I was in your shoes? Help me see the world as you see it. And so the more that we explore that world, the more that we understand behaviors. And as Beverly James, you know, all those years ago said, or behavior is communication, once we understand what that child's communicating, well, you know, as again, Dan Siegel would say, we're naming, we're taming, and we change behavior.

Colby 56:28

Yeah, yeah. So it's not always the case of and and would I would guess that you would say that more often it is the case that um the process assists contemporary care of the children to have a better understanding of what's going on with their behaviour, and that that far from being overwhelming for and and and triggering or or rich or traumatizing for the carer is is actually a relief. Is it is a remarkable.

Talking About Trauma Without Harm

Richard 57:01

I remember being in Queensland um back in 2008 when I first came to Australia uh to do talking about life story work. And and uh 59 times later, my last visit was in May last year. Um and it was it was amazing to meet so many, you know, kind of dedicated people working with the most hurt of our you know our community. But um I met with the the the then children's minister or one of the children's ministers in um Brisbane, uh, and um I said to him, Look, you know, um I'm really concerned because you know, just like we have in England, we have the same problem, by the way, we put our most challenging, most needing, most vulnerable children in the care of people, but we don't tell them anything about them. And so they have to guess, they have to kind of work out, or if they've looked after a similar child, they might assume that child's had the same experience. And of course, trauma is unique, and you know, we need to understand each child is unique. And the the minister agreed with me, and the minister said, Well, yes. And I said, So, what can we do to help our carers to make sense of you know the things that have happened to the children they may be caring for? And and a bit of that is what we'll go on talk about in a bit, maybe the the um care excess program. Um, but because of that, when I was, you know, kind of designing life story work, what I wanted to make sure was that when we worked with a child and their carer, that that carer understood that child's past. And so what we have is so many eureka moments. And once you know something, actually it takes away the imagination of it, it takes away the horror sometimes, it takes away the kind of feeling of inadequacy because we now know it. And because you and I in our work, for instance, we would hold that space as Winnicott talks about, you know, that I'm not overwhelmed by you. That's quite you know nice to be able to share with a carer that you know your child needs to see that you're not overwhelmed by them. That doesn't mean you're a robot, that doesn't mean you are, you know, kind of um not feeling their emotions. What you're doing is you're saying, I'm here to keep you safe. But when it comes to the big question of re-traumatising, which is a giant question in this direct work as well, of course, where we're getting children or young people or adults to think about what happened to them. Um I kind of go to two places, really. One is again, Vera Falberg. So Vera Falberg wrote a beautiful book called A Child's Journey Through Placement, and it's it's just lovely. Uh, and in that book, uh, which she first wrote in 1984 and then updated all the way up to 2012, um, and she says the very fact that we hesitate to talk to children about their trauma implies to that child that even we can't manage it. But they live and continue to live that trauma. So that's always guided me. Um the other thing is, and I've learned this through experience now, it is very, very, very hard actually to re-traumatize an already traumatized child. But you can, and absolutely you can, and you can if you don't do your background, you don't do your preparation, and you just go straight in and tell a child something pretty awful without a relationship, without opportunity of you know, being that kind of um strong counterpart that could hold you while you take the risk of talking. Um, again, an example, just a just so I could share it with you. You know, often we're asking our social workers to do the most impossible things. And I remember uh being involved in a case where uh a young person had to be told that his grandfather was his father and that he had abused uh this child's mother. Um and the social worker had no idea how to do this because it is a really difficult space. How do you talk to children, young people about sex? But then how do you talk about sex where it is, you know, kind of a violence or it is a hurt? Um, and so you know, this this social worker had no idea, and and I don't blame her at all because we're not good at training social workers in how to communicate with chronic children, we're just not good at it. We don't do it in university, we think we pick it up in the job, but we don't. Um, and so this social worker, like many social workers, and for me sometimes in my past, we procrastinate, we procrastinate, we procrastinate. The day before it was coming to court, the uh court office contacted the authorities and said, Do these boys know? Because it's going to be talked about in open court. They hadn't told them. So they went to the house at eight o'clock that night and sat that children down, and they said to the children, uh, I've got some really bad news for you. I've got to tell you the courts, and the judges maybe tell you, um, your um granddad is your dad. He had sex with your mum, and then the worker said, I'm sorry, I've got to go now, and she left. Now that is re-traumatizing. But you could have done exactly the same thing, exactly the same thing in the sense of telling these children, but by doing that in a way which is um safe, which is holding the space. And the way to do that, of course, is to create that relationship first. And once you have that relationship, when that child knows that you could hear these things without feeling uh, you know, kind of disappointment or uh anger or um sadness, but you can hold that child and they believe you can do that, then you could tell a child anything. And of course, in my work, I talk about death, I talk about sex, I talk about uh loss and separation, um, but in a way, hopefully, that's accessible, but also that relieves that trauma, not you know, impacts on it. Um, and as you and I both know, when we do our life story work, everything goes on the wallpaper. So if we externalize from what we carry that residue that Gabor Mate talks about, if we can externalize that residue onto the paper, a bit like a giant memory jar, but it's not going anywhere, and we can work through it slowly and methodically, it's no longer a trauma as such. It is something that happened to me that made me feel this way. But now I understand it, and now it's something that I can make sense of, it no longer weighs me down. Um, and I think that you know, a lot of the reason we do that second part, that wallpaper role, is because what we're saying to a child is life is tough, and if you carry it in you, you're not gonna have much time for the now. Uh, and so when we do the wallpaper work with children, the first thing we see change for children of school age is they manage school, they start to do well in school because all that preoccupation they've been carrying is now being drained away and they're able to listen, they're able to make sense, they're able to concentrate. And of course, I haven't met a child I've worked with that isn't incredibly clever because they've had to be clever to survive. So once you don't have to worry about survival, that skill can then be, you know, kind of uh transferable to something that they can do incredible things with. So I think that, you know, yes, you can re-traumatize children doing life story work, but you have to try. Um, but if you create relationship, if you hold that child, you know, as part of your uh kind of um uh process, if you support the carer to mirror what you do, to become much more uh receptive uh and you get trust in there, which is what I try and work on, you can do an amazing job. Um, and you know, again, I think podcasts are quite nice to have these kind of little uh illustrations. I remember working with a nine-year-old boy, and uh nobody wants to tell this nine-year-old boy why dad was in prison, and everybody's getting themselves into all this kind of knot and whatever else. Um, and um the judge involved in this case said, This child has to know, it is not appropriate not to know. So I was asked to do the work, and so I get to know him, and it's why we love these 18 sessions, and in getting to know him, I'm hearing his story, and we get to a point where we we I talk about his timeline, and um I said, Oh, I said, Um, I know that you know your dad's in prison. He said, Yeah, I do, he said, and I could see the tenseness of the carers, you know, oh my gosh, what's gonna happen? Um, and um I said, Do you do you know why people go to prison? And he looked at me and he said, Oh, well, because they murder their wives and rape their daughters. And I went, Oh, so is that why everybody goes to prison? And he said, No, Richard, that's why my dad's in prison. And of course, um sorry about that, and of course, um the carers didn't know he knew, and so had been protecting him. But you know, I think that what I would say to everybody uh that might be listed this, um children, young people who have been hurt, who have uh you know, kind of seen their life being very, very uh dangerous, they become brilliant at vigilance and achievement. And they also have big ears. Um And when I was child, when I was a residential worker for many years, I had an 80-20 rule, which was that my young people knew 80% of what was going on in the house to my 20%. And this did a boy when his dad said to him, I didn't know you knew, he said, Well, you and Mum were arguing about it the other day when you thought Richard was coming. So what happened was they were saying, Yeah, but when he finds out about dad doing this, and when he finds out about, and of course he's hearing all this, but what's he do with it? So again, if we didn't talk to him about that in this lovely process of life story work, who will talk to him about it? And now he has his images in his head without them being you know processed. Um and that's why, you know, I love doing this work.

Colby 1:06:41

Yeah, the stories, the stories that we create uh, you know, to to explain our life, and and that's what's going through my head at the at the moment. The um the the issue of the stories, the story the child has created, the stories the carers are left to create because they don't have you know the information to to um to create any other story other than it wasn't safe for you to be at home with mum and dad. I mean the story that I mean just to finish up on the re-traumatising, not not to belabor that that point, but um I found myself thinking, I mean, while she's been talking, I've been thinking about all the young people I've known over the years who just have no coherent story about about their life and why they why they came into care in the first place, why they left so many placements along the way. Um and rather than being re-traumatizing, I think they just like to know exactly. And in actual fact, the value in it is that they can stop thinking it was their fault. It was their fault, it was their fault, it was their fault, it was their fault.

Richard 1:08:01

Which is the common denominator, isn't it? I mean, if you're somebody small and you'll be brought up to think your parents are your gods, and then something happens to you, well, it can't be God's fault, it can't be my parents' fault. Um, and so the common denominator is it must be my fault, like my young person I spoke to about, you know, who said, you know, I'm in care, my sister in care because I was born. But I think it's also um easier to take the blame um in the notion of of what happened. It's just much harder to live with the blame. That's my problem.

Colby 1:08:31

I think there's something in there about children who feel powerless and impotent will will create stories that that that suggest that they were more influential than they they they possibly uh could be. Look, I know you're training today and we're we're up against a bit of a uh um a hard deadline, but I just wonder you you raised that a moment ago, and I wondered if you would like to say a few words about um the Academy that um I'd I'd love to.

Making The Child The Editor

Thea Academy And Care Excellence

Richard 1:09:00

If I could be a bit naughty and cheeky though, um it just to finish off the model, really. The third part of the model is the um book. No, it's okay. Um and our book, you know, many times when you do therapy life story work, or no, sorry, when you do life story work, sorry, um, a book is written and some of the books are fantastic. Uh, and I'm not here to say you shouldn't do life story work. Some of those books are brilliant, but they're not the child's life story, they're your story of the child. And that's the bit you've got to get to to understand that you're not actually doing a child's life story, you're doing a book about their life. Um, if you're going to do a life story book with a child, that notion of with a child comes into play. So, our children, when we write up their books, um, on average a child will fill in with us between four and six wallpapers. So, that's about 40 to 60 meters of their storytelling. Um, then someone like me would write that up, um, but we would use the words on the wallpaper, or we might ask the child to walk through their wallpaper and and audio them so we've got their words that we can use in their book. But then we make the children editors-in-chief of their book. So, what that means is they decide actually what goes in their book and what doesn't. So, if they don't want a picture of dad in their book, dad's not in their book. They don't want to uh have the story about you know stealing chocolate cake, that's that's not in the book. Um, now most of my young people want everything, but to give them the choice is saying to them, this is your story. And then finally, most people who do these uh life story books and some therapy life story books, they bind the book, they put a bind to it because it looks really lovely. Please don't do that. Because what you'll then say to that child is when you share your book, it's all or nothing. So when we do our books, we put them in ring binders, literally ring binders. We use polypockets where we put um the pages back to back. We never we never number the pages so that if the child doesn't want to show uh you know somebody a uh a part of their story, they can literally take those pages out, and you would never know, you would never know they're missing because we write the the book independent pages, so we don't have a story going into the next page or a theme going into the next page. What that does then that says to that child, your story is your story to tell. Um, just like me, I could decide what I share with Colby and I could say what I don't share with Colby, and Colby could share with me what he wants, and he could decide not to share stuff with me. And if Colby and I don't like each other, it's gonna be a short conversation. Um, but if Colby and I get on with each other, we might find that we don't have enough time and it's really annoying because I want to talk longer. And this is about human relationships, and uh, you know, this uh I think is really important to say. Um, so I just want to finish that bit off. Um, with with the Care Excellence program and Thea, so um, as I mentioned right at the very beginning, it's it I've been doing um social work or social care now uh since I was 17, I'm now 60, um, and I've started to feel it. Um, and so what I want to do um was to give something back. So in um July last year, no, the year before last, um, I decided that we would put all our training that we offer into what's called Thea. And Thea is our trauma health education international academy. Uh, Thea also is the goddess of light, and we wanted to shine a light on best practice because there is some fantastic practice out there, but people aren't getting that light shone on that practice because of you know the rapidness of everything. Um, and um the Academy itself does offer lots of different training, which I'm not advertising for you guys. Um, but what it does do, which I'm very proud of, is it provides a uh care excellence program which is designed for any carer of a child or an adult, young adult that's hurting. So that would be uh connected carers, kidship carers, foster carers, guardians, adopters, and first-year residential workers. Um, we've been running it over here in the UK for uh a year and a half now. Uh, we've trained just under a thousand people so far, uh, and I'm funding it for uh 10 years. So there's another eight and a bit years to go. Um we're having difficulty with traction over here. I think when anything's free, people think it's not really worth it then. Um but of course it's not free, it does cost, believe me. Um, but it's it's something I'm quite happy to fund. Um we wanted to bring it over to Australia um in February this year, um, but we've had a few hiccups. And what we've noticed is that a lot of people from Australia are actually coming to the training because actually the uh timing of it works quite well with your um late evenings, or not too late evenings, but your like five to seven or whatever it might be. Um anyway, we will be bringing it over. There will be uh the opportunity to bring it over with you. Um, and um obviously I'll make that as as clear as I can. Um we have very good relationships with uh very many organizations in Australia, Berry Street, McKillop, and so on and so on. But we also have our own community in Australia of Life Story Work, brilliantly led by Elise Saunders, which is called um the TLSW Australia. Um and so, you know, if anybody's interested in the TEP, it's a five-day course, it's online, uh four hours per day, um, and the subjects are really uh attachment and child development, trauma and recovery, healing through stories, working with challenges and neurodivergent young people, and then the last uh one is self-care and the trouble with newts. Now, the trouble with newts is uh again, Colby, you'll know this from your work, how vicarious trauma and compassionate trauma uh is this thing that all of us will get. It's not a case of IV. Um, so what do we do to help ourselves be as uh kind of safe as possible? Uh, and that's not just supervision, that's about a healthy lifestyle, that's about being open with yourself and being able to say, you know, I'm not managing. So we do a whole kind of session on self-care. Um, it's a lovely course, and I wanted to pay my respects to Anita Pell. Uh, Anita Pell used to work for Berry Street, she's now retired, and Anita and I were given the opportunity to train uh carers in Cera Cafe in Victoria and also carers across Australia in um what we were calling then um uh care success. Uh and so um, you know, some of that um early rollout became what we now have as CEP. So yeah, I'm hoping very much so that some point during this year, maybe um in the September term, we'll be saying to Australia every uh two months, we will provide this five-day course for those who are interested. Um, and uh yeah, let's hope it it makes the difference that it's making over here. Uh the re the re the reviews we get are incredible.

Colby 1:16:08

Wonderful, terrific. Well, the sun's come up, it seems behind you there. Richard, you're uh sun is up. Yeah, we were um uh before we we started recording, we were just talking about where you were, and uh and I was assuming that yeah, the sun hadn't come up a bit, but you're in Scotland.

Richard 1:16:26

Uh I'm in Scotland. I'm actually uh we have um a local authority here, uh like a department in Australia who uh have invested in the what we call the professional certificate in TLSW. So uh I'm just about to go over and uh do some training for about 20 people on their uh day three of this course. Um so yeah, so it's a very, very popular course over here.

Colby 1:16:50

Yeah, well have a great day training and uh um and thank you very much for making the time to come on and talk about your work and uh hopefully we might get an opportunity at another time to talk about uh things in in even more detail. But thank you again.

Richard 1:17:10

You're you're very kind to invite me, Colby, and uh thank you ever so much everybody for taking the time to listen to this. Uh and again, if there's anything I can do, I'm sure Colby will put um contact details on. Um but uh Colby, loving to be, you've heard about you for quite a while. So nice to put your name to a face. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and um, yeah, it's it's it's good to see that even you know us that have had a few years' experience, you know, still have things to learn, uh, which you know what you're doing is you're helping us learn. So thank you for that. And uh take care, everybody.

Aura App And Closing Message

Colby 1:17:43

Thank you. What if there was a way to prompt parents to pause each day and reflect about parenting and what they do? What if there was a way for them to track straightforward aspects of the parenting role and how these impact the home environment? What if there was a way to feed this information back to family support services to assist with discussions about patterns and plans? What if there was a way for their daily reflections to contribute to research and best practice about the provision of nurturing homes where children grow to their full potential? What if there was a way to promote good parenting practices at scale? Well, there is a way. The Aura by Secure Start app prompts parents each day to pause and reflect about the parenting role and its contribution to the home. It encourages focus on four important aspects of parenting and relationships that are foundations for a healthy growing environment. Where there has been adversity, they are also foundations for repair and recovery. The Aura by Secure Start app is available in the Apple App Store. The Android version is coming soon. If you would like more information, do get in touch.