Life Story Work: Helping a Child Hold On to Their Own Story

Most children come into care knowing part of what happened to them and guessing at the rest. The guesses are usually worse than the truth. Here is what life story work is, who leads it, and the part a foster carer actually plays.

Please note: this is general information, not advice about a particular child. Legal references are to the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010, and the figures come from the Department for Education’s Children looked after in England statistics published on 26 November 2025. Both correct at August 2026. Life story work for any individual child is planned and led by that child’s social worker.

What is life story work?

It is the work of helping a child understand their own past. Why they came into care. Who their family are. What happened, in what order, and what none of it says about them.

It is not one big conversation. It is not a scrapbook handed over on the way out of the door.

Done properly it is a planned piece of work that moves at the child’s pace. Some children end up with a book. Others end up with a memory box, a film on a phone, a folder of photographs with names written on the back. The format follows the child, not the other way round.

Whose job is it?

Not yours.

Life story work belongs to the child’s social worker. They decide when a child is ready to start, they plan the sessions, and sometimes a therapist is involved as well. You might sit in. Often you will not.

That surprises a lot of people who are thinking about fostering. They picture themselves on the living room floor, trying to explain to a seven year old why she cannot live with her mum.

You will not be asked to do that unprepared, and you should not do it off your own bat. Published practice guidance for foster carers is consistent on this: agree the work with the child’s social worker first, and expect a plan that says when the sessions happen and who is around afterwards.

So what does a foster carer actually do?

You collect. And you notice things nobody else is in a position to notice.

The list from our own carer guidance runs to about thirty items. The ones that matter most:

• Photographs, labelled with who is in them, where it was and when. An unlabelled photo is worth a fraction of a labelled one in fifteen years’ time.
• Certificates, school reports, badges, a trophy they would rather not have on the shelf.
• A first tooth. A lock of hair from a first haircut. A hospital wristband.
• Tickets from a day out, a seashell from Cromer, a party invitation.
• Birthday cards, letters from previous foster carers, letters from birth family.
• Drawings, craft, a recipe for something they cooked, especially food from their country of origin.
• First steps and first words, written down on the day, because you will not remember the date by Christmas.

Keep digital copies of anything that can be scanned or photographed, on secure storage rather than only on your phone. Phones get dropped down toilets.

Most of this is admin, and dull admin at that. Ten seconds with a pen: “Ellis, Cromer beach, July 2026”. That is the whole skill.

Why does a shoebox of tickets matter?

Because the paperwork outlives everything else.

Under regulation 50 of the 2010 regulations, a local authority must keep a looked-after child’s case record until the seventy-fifth anniversary of that child’s birth. A four year old placed in Norwich this autumn can, at fifty, ask to read what adults wrote about her.

Some of that will be a social worker’s assessment. Some of it will be a court document. Whether there is also a photograph of her laughing on a beach with sand in her hair depends entirely on whether somebody could be bothered at the time.

There were 81,770 children looked after in England on 31 March 2025, and 54,820 of them were living with foster families. That is a lot of childhoods being recorded mostly in the language of assessment. The shoebox is the counterweight.

What if the child does not want to talk about the past?

Then they do not.

Not every child is ready, and readiness is a judgement for their social worker to make, not a hurdle for you to get them over. A child who slams the drawer shut at nine may open it at fourteen.

You carry on collecting either way. The box waits.

Is it upsetting for children?

Sometimes, yes. It would be dishonest to say otherwise.

Sessions can bring back memories that leave a child confused or angry for days. Some go quiet. Some blow up about something completely unrelated, like the wrong cereal.

What helps afterwards is ordinary and unimpressive: the usual routine, the usual bedtime, no interrogation. Then tell the child’s social worker and your supervising social worker what you saw, because that is information the plan needs.

One thing to hold on to. If a child asks you a direct question about their history and you do not know the answer, say you do not know, and say you will find out who can tell them. Do not fill the gap with a kind guess. A guess that turns out to be wrong is the thing they will remember.

Where does the birth family fit in?

Right in the middle of it, usually.

A child’s understanding of their own history is built partly in life story sessions and partly in the ordinary business of seeing their family. That is why family time with birth relatives and life story work pull in the same direction when they are handled well.

Brothers and sisters matter here too. Siblings are often the only people alive who remember the same kitchen, and each of them holds pieces of the story the others have lost. It is one of several reasons we work hard at keeping brothers and sisters together where we can.

What happens to it all when a child moves on?

It goes with them. All of it.

The book, the box, the memory stick: they belong to the child, not to the placement. Transferring them is the job of the child’s social worker and the supervising social worker, and it is one of those handovers that quietly goes wrong when nobody is watching.

Label things. Pack them properly. Do not leave the photographs on a laptop that stays in your house.

For children in a long-term foster home, and for young people who stay put past their eighteenth birthday, the collecting simply carries on. The box gets heavier and the story gets easier to tell.

You will not be doing this on your own

Every Fostering Hearts carer has a supervising social worker, and each of ours supports around six families. That is a deliberately small number. It means the person on the other end of the phone knows which child you are talking about before you have finished the sentence.

Alongside that you get training that covers identity and talking with children about difficult things, plus a lead education consultant who tracks how the children in our care are getting on at school. Children we look after carry a pocket-sized card with the numbers they need if they want to raise a worry with somebody outside the house, and our Youth Council has written questions that get asked at fostering panel.

None of that requires you to be a therapist. It requires you to keep a shoebox and answer honestly.

Ofsted inspected us in November 2024 and called us a good agency with outstanding leadership and management. One carer told the inspectors: “My supervising social worker has been an absolute lifeline for me. I feel so much more confident in my role because of her.”

Frequently asked questions

Do foster carers do life story work themselves?

No. It is led by the child’s social worker, who decides when to start and plans the sessions. A foster carer gathers photographs and mementoes, notices how the child is afterwards, and sometimes sits in on a session when the plan says so.

Do I need a qualification for this?

No. You need a pen, somewhere to keep things safely, and the honesty to say “I don’t know” when you don’t. Fostering Hearts provides training on identity and talking with children about their history.

How long does life story work take?

There is no fixed length. Our own carer guidance uses about six months as a rule of thumb, but plenty of children take far longer, and some pause for a year or two and pick it up again later. It follows the child, not a timetable.

Can a young person read their care records when they are older?

Yes. A local authority has to keep a looked-after child’s case record until the seventy-fifth anniversary of their birth, and care-experienced adults can ask to see what was written about them. That is one reason it is worth putting good things in the file as well as difficult ones.

What happens to the life story book if a child moves to another foster home?

It goes with the child. The book, the memory box and any digital copies belong to them. The child’s social worker and the supervising social worker arrange the handover.