Therapeutic Stories For Foster Adoptive And Kinship Families

This accessible resource contains therapeutic stories and guidance for adults who are supporting young people aged 10–14 in foster, adoptive or kinship families. With a solution-focused approach, the stories are designed to address a range of social and emotional problems, covering topics such as bullying, eating disorders, trauma, parents’ health, homophobia and racism. Each story is accompanied by relevant context and theory, discussion points and creative activities that will stimulate the young person’s problem-solving skills and imagination, empowering them to explore solutions to situations in their own lives. Key features include: 35 therapeutic stories created to help young people make sense of their experiences, illustrating empathetic responses and solutions to social and emotional difficulties. Discussion points and related activities based on the author’s extensive practical experience and knowledge. Practice guidelines and case studies to illustrate how the story-making approach can be used by therapists, adoptive parents, social workers and teachers. Photocopiable and downloadable resources. This book will enable foster, adoptive and kinship parents, social workers, therapists, teachers and other professionals to support the young people with whom they are working to resolve their dilemmas and enhance their self-esteem.

Narrative and Dramatic Approaches to Children’s Life Story with Foster, Adoptive and Kinship Families outlines narrative and dramatic approaches to improve vulnerable family relationships. It provides a model which offers new ways for parents to practise communicating with their children and develop positive relationships. The book focuses on the Theatre of Attachment model - a highly innovative approach which draws from a strong theoretical base to demonstrate the importance of narrative and dramatic play for sharing the children’s life history in the family home with their adoptive, foster or kinship parents. An emphasis is on having fun ways to work through complex feelings and divided loyalties, so as to secure attachment. This practice model aims to raise children’s self-esteem and communication skills and to combat the profound effects of abuse, neglect on trauma on children’s development. This book will be of great interest for academics, post-graduate students, universities and Training bodies, service providers and practitioners involved in social work and creative therapies, child psychologists, child psychotherapists and public and private adoption and foster care agencies.

Creating New Families is intended to reflect the practice of the specialist, multi-disciplinary Fostering and Adoption team in the Child and Family Department of the Tavistock Clinic. The team is firmly rooted in an approach which values inter-disciplinary working for the contribution which the thinking of each discipline makes to the overall endeavour with the child and family. It also places great importance on multi-agency collaboration, especially with social services and education, without which no intervention with this group of children can succeed. The book represents the differing ways in which members contribute to the work of the team, with individual and joint accounts by clinicians of the ways in which their therapeutic practice has evolved and about the theoretical thinking on which it is based.

A burgeoning evidence base supports that arts, play and other creative therapies have potential to help children in foster care, kinship care or adoptive families to recover from complex trauma. Written by contributors working at the cutting edge of delivering effective therapeutic interventions, this innovative book describes models for working with children in foster care, kinship care or adoption. Covering how to assess needs and contextual considerations for working with children and families, this book presents a range of creative therapeutic approaches spanning art psychotherapy, music therapy and dance therapy. It emphasizes the necessity of working with caregivers and other significant adults, as well as the child, to facilitate recovery. The theoretical foundations of attachment, developmental psychology and neurobiology are embedded in each chapter showing how they underpin each of the recommended creative therapies. This book will be suitable for professionals directly employing creative approaches in their practice, such as arts therapists and play therapists, as well as those working with children who are interested in creative alternate approaches, such as psychologists, counsellors, therapists and social workers.

The Routledge International Handbook of Therapeutic Stories and Storytelling is a unique book that explores stories from an educational, community, social, health, therapeutic and therapy perspectives, acknowledging a range of diverse social and cultural views in which stories are used and written by esteemed storytellers, artists, therapists and academics from around the globe. The book is divided into five main sections that examine different approaches and contexts for therapeutic stories and storytelling. The collected authors explore storytelling as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, in education, social and community settings, and in health and therapeutic contexts. The final section offers an International Story Anthology written by co-editor Sharon Jacksties and a final story by Katja Gorečan. This book is of enormous importance to psychotherapists and related mental health professionals, as well as academics, storytellers, teachers, people working in special educational needs, and all those with an interest in storytelling and its applied value.

What is Your Story? is an engaging, colourful book that gives children permission to discover their unique journey of adoption or kinship. The book’s goal is to normalize the questions children have, while at the same time normalizing the need to ask them. Divided by activity pages, each chapter can be read independently, and even out of order, in an effort to focus on each child’s specific story. This book can help: -Parents, caregivers, and other adults involved in the adoption or kinship process to have open, honest discussions with children about their unique stories. -Birth parents who want to talk about adoption and kinship with birth children they are not living with. It can help children understand their unique story of why they are not living together with their birth parent(s) and who their birth family is. -Professionals who are preparing children for adoption or kinship placements, as well as therapists working with children who are living through adoption or kinship processes. Special note to parents/caregivers Designed as a fun way to reinforce the content that you have just read together, the activity pages between the chapters are also a natural way to stop reading if you or the child are feeling overwhelmed. This book is more of a journey than a story and sometimes you or your child may need to stay on a chapter until it is comfortable to continue, until all the feelings are felt, or until all the questions are asked. Just like other journeys, detours and construction delays are normal and even expected. Some families might need to reach out to community resources to help manage their feelings and that is encouraged. There are as many ways to read this book, as there are butterflies!

What is Your Story? is an engaging, colourful book that gives children permission to discover their unique journey of adoption or kinship. The book's goal is to normalize the questions children have, while at the same time normalizing the need to ask them. Divided by activity pages, each chapter can be read independently, and even out of order, in an effort to focus on each child's specific story. This book can help: -Parents, caregivers, and other adults involved in the adoption or kinship process to have open, honest discussions with children about their unique stories. -Birth parents who want to talk about adoption and kinship with birth children they are not living with. It can help children understand their unique story of why they are not living together with their birth parent(s) and who their birth family is. -Professionals who are preparing children for adoption or kinship placements, as well as therapists working with children who are living through adoption or kinship processes. Special note to parents/caregivers Designed as a fun way to reinforce the content that you have just read together, the activity pages between the chapters are also a natural way to stop reading if you or the child are feeling overwhelmed. This book is more of a journey than a story and sometimes you or your child may need to stay on a chapter until it is comfortable to continue, until all the feelings are felt, or until all the questions are asked. Just like other journeys, detours and construction delays are normal and even expected. Some families might need to reach out to community resources to help manage their feelings and that is encouraged. There are as many ways to read this book, as there are butterflies

Developing Secure Attachment Through Play offers a range of imaginative and engaging play-based activities, designed to help vulnerable young children forge safe attachments with their caregivers. The book focuses on key developmental stages that may have been missed due to challenging life circumstances, such as social-emotional development, object permanence and physical and sensory development. It also considers pertinent issues including trauma, separation, loss and transition. Chapters explore each topic from a theoretical perspective, before offering case studies that illustrate the theory in practice, and a range of activities to demonstrate the effectiveness of play in developing healthy attachments. Key features of this book include: • 80 activities that can be carried out at home or in educational settings, designed to facilitate attachment and enhance social-emotional development; • case vignettes exploring creative activities such as mirroring, construction play, physical play, baby doll play and messy play; • scripts and strategies to create a safe and respectful environment for vulnerable children; • photocopiable and downloadable resources, including early learning goals, a collection of therapeutic stories and a transition calendar By engaging children in these activities, parents, caregivers and practitioners can help the children in their care gain a sense of belonging and develop their self-esteem. This will be a valuable resource for early years practitioners, adoptive, foster and kinship parents, and therapists and social workers supporting young children.