Introduce yourself and your family

I’m Hayley, my husband Lee and I adopted our daughter when she was 10 months old. She is now three and a half. She’s our only child and certainly keeps us busy and entertained!

How often do you have contact with birth family? 

We have letterbox contact with birth mother and a sibling (who is also adopted) once a year

What kind of things do you include in the letters? Do you send anything else like photos or pictures drawn by your children? 

We tend to include lots of details in the letters about our daughter’s hobbies, for example, dance classes that she’s recently started. We say what her favourite music or films are. If we’ve been on any holidays, we talk about those and what she enjoyed doing on them. We keep the letters very generalised and never mention a specific area. We’ve never sent any photos.

Do you write the letters or does your child get involved too? 

At the moment I write the letters as she’s too young to understand. I may include her in the future but it depends on how she is dealing with all of the emotions of adoption and if she wants to be involved. It would be her choice.

Have you requested any help and support in connection with contact from your agency? If so, what sort of help did you receive? Did it do what you needed it to? 

We haven’t needed to contact our agency yet (our agency was Adoption Focus which you recently featured and they are amazing). Although we haven’t had to use their help regarding contact, I know they would be there to support us anytime we needed it.

Do you get any replies from birth family or siblings? 

Unfortunately, birth mother has never replied to any of the letters. We had a response from her sibling the first time we wrote, but they haven’t replied to any further letters, which I find incredibly sad for our little girl.

When your child came home, did they have any memory of their birth family?

No memories at all due to her young age

If no, what age were they when you started life story work? 

We have always left our daughter’s life storybook lying around so she has constant access to it. She doesn’t yet understand what the contents mean, she just enjoys looking at photographs of herself. She’s familiar with the word adoption and knows that we adopted her but again she doesn’t really have an understanding of what that is. We’ll continue to look through her life storybook with her and even begin to read sections from it when she is a little older and can understand more.

Have you accessed any type of help or support with life story work?

Not yet but again I know Adoption Focus is always available should we need them

How has your child reacted to life story work?

So far her reactions are positive but it is very difficult for her to understand what has happened to her. There’s a picture of birth mum in her book and she knows the term birth mum but doesn’t understand the meaning yet.

We look through it with her and say all of these words at a young age so that they just become the norm for her. She’ll grow up with all of the terminology and can develop an understanding of her history easily.

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Life story work is a crucial part of an adopted child’s childhood. It helps them understand their birth history and their journey to becoming part of a new family.

This article looks at why it’s so important to do life story work with your child. And gives some tips and advice on what to include if you don’t get a life storybook from your agency.

What is life story work and why is it important?

“Children separated from their birth families are often denied the opportunity to know about their past and to clarify past events in terms of the present. They may have changed families, social workers, homes, and neighbourhoods. Their past may be lost, much of it even forgotten. Losing track of the past can make it difficult for children to develop emotionally and socially. Life story work is an attempt to give back some of this past.” (Ryan, T and Walker, R, 2016).

Life story work aims not only to help adopted children understand their personal history and life experiences but also to help them develop a sense of security and identity. “Who am I and where do I belong?”

‘Life story work’ is much more than just completing a book outlining key factors in the child or young person’s history and heritage (their ‘life story book’). The process of life story work encompasses a range of activities, particularly a trusting relationship with an adult to help a child explore their history and heritage. The completion of a life storybook is an important tool in the process.

Elements in life story work can include play, listening and observation, memory boxes and books, photograph albums, life celebration days, and later life letters. This now includes forms of online recording and social media events when these are safe and appropriate. These various tools and activities often overlap. They can be used as and when appropriate for the child or young person.

A collaborative approach

Life story work needs a comprehensive and collaborative approach. Everybody can have a role to contribute including birth families, social workers, foster carers, and adoptive parents.

Through life story work, adoptive parents can work together with their child to give them a stronger sense of their history and heritage and the thoughts and feelings that result from this. This usually means helping them understand why they were adopted.

Life story work can help to strengthen the bond between adoptive parents and their child. It can help adoptive parents to build sensitivity, understanding, and empathy for their child.  As such, it can be a therapeutic process, allowing children to make sense of what happened in the past and think about their aspirations for the future even if this is stressful or anxiety-provoking.

Adopted children can sometimes blame themselves for the reasons they were taken into care even if abuse and neglect were the primary reason.  Life story work can help them to put these thoughts and feelings into words where their sense of blame can develop into a more helpful narrative that increases their sense of feeling safe and secure in their adoptive families.

What should a life storybook include?

A life storybook usually includes information about birth family members, when and where the child was born, any previous foster carers, and why they were adopted.  Over time there may also be a record of the details about their adoptive family.

A life story book needs to provide an honest, but sensitively written account of the child’s history. It should be presented in an age-appropriate and child-friendly way. For example, using bite-sized chapters and colourful images or objects. It’s a story of the child’s memories and feelings in words, pictures and objects, and it’s important that these make sense to them in a way that they feel comfortable with. Every book will be different, but centre on the child or young person as it’s ‘their book’.

Life story books are a statutory requirement for adopted children in England and Wales. It should be given to the child and adopters within 10 days of their celebration hearing. Once children are with their adoptive families, the life storybook can, over time, be adapted in a way that will help children build on their growing security.

Whilst a traditional life storybook is ordered chronologically, starting with birth family and ending with adoption, other practitioners recommend a more balanced approach that enables children to learn about their history whilst enhancing security in their adoptive family.

Life storybook format

Leading adoption expert Joy Rees suggests using the format of present – past – present – future, as follows:

• Present – Current information about the child, their adoptive family, likes and interests, and a simple explanation of adoption.
• Past – The social worker’s account of the child’s history – details of birth family including siblings, place and time of birth, details of foster carers, ending with the granting of the Adoption Order. This section should include an honest but sensitive account of the events leading up to the child going into care, but should reinforce throughout that abuse and neglect, and any placement moves in care are not their fault or because they have done something wrong.
• Present – Bring the child back to the present, perhaps by focusing on the child’s favourite things which give adoptive parents the chance to show how well they know their child.
• Future – End on a positive note with the child’s plans, hopes and aspirations

How can the life storybook be used?

All adopted children should have a life storybook. Whatever their age, it’s never too early or late to start a book if one has not been provided.

Rather than a life storybook being seen as a ‘one-off’ piece of work, it should be continually revisited throughout a child’s life and at key developmental stages. It can be updated, with additional details added, as children grow in security and understanding.

Adoptive parents will read the book to their child or the child may read it to them. It should be used as a basis for answering the child’s questions, so it’s important they feel comfortable with it. Adoptive parents can judge if further details are needed, or if wording needs to be changed. Adoptive parents should be sensitive to their tone of voice, facial expressions, and gestures. Be curious and gently explore the child’s feelings and emotions.

Some final tips for adoptive parents… 

• Consider writing the life storybook in the third person, using your child’s first name, which can be a gentler way of sharing difficult information, especially for younger children
• Answer questions that arise honestly and in line with your child’s age, level of understanding, and stage of development. Admit when you don’t know the answer and offer to find out
• Thread positive messages throughout the book to reinforce that your child is safe and loved and to raise their self-esteem 

Books and further information 

• ‘Life Story Books for Adopted Children: A Family Friendly Approach’ by Joy Rees:
• ‘Life Story Work: What, Why, How and When’ by Tony Ryan and Rodger Walker, published by CoramBAAF:
• First4Adoption – life story work guide for adoptive parents

Head to Compass Fostering’s website to find out some statistics about fostering. Many adopted children spend sometimes years in foster care before they’re adopted, so including this type of information in their life story book is also important.

If you’d like to read more articles about life story work and other adoption topics, head to the adoption section.

As far as I know, there aren’t any actual post boxes. But you do send your contact letter to the local authority who then send it on.

Post box contact is a way that adoptive and birth families can keep in touch. For most adopted children, it’s the only type of contact they’ll have with their birth family throughout their childhood. That’s why it’s so important that adoptive parents do it.

What should it include?

We have post box contact with our children’s birth family every summer. I really struggled to start off with, knowing what to write and also, how to get the tone right. I didn’t want to sound like I was bragging saying how wonderful the children are.

It’s difficult to imagine what it must be like having an annual letter as the only means of contact with your child. Writing it from the perspective of what you think they’d like to know is a good place to start.

What would birth parents like to be in it?

I asked Sammy who is birth mum to a school aged child, the kinds of things she’d like to see in the letters she receives. She said she’d love to know details like height and weight which is something I would never have thought to include. And also how their medical condition is so that she knows it’s being managed.

She said she’d also like to know how her child is feeling and dealing with their new life. I think as adopters that’s the kind of thing we deliberately don’t include, particularly if there are issues. If you’d like to include information like that, my advice would be to speak to post adoption support first.

Sammy said she’d also love to know how her child is getting on at school. So favourite subjects and topics is a good area to write about. It’s also easy to give lots of examples of the things they’re doing for this.

Hearing Sammy’s viewpoint has helped me know how to write our next letter. Not knowing how to tackle a contact letter is quite common among adopters. When there’s no reply from birth family, it can be disheartening and the temptation may be not to continue with it. You can read Sammy’s interview here where she goes into more detail about how contact works for her.

Guidance

Emma Sutton has written this great guide on how to go about it and why it’s so important. If you don’t follow @adoption.resources on Instagram, go and check her out. She’s got some brilliant resources and recommendations about adoption, including this post with templates for contact letter.

The most important thing is to make sure you do it. Regardless of whether you get a response or not, it’s vital for your child as part of their life story work.

Hello! I’m Holly Marlow, parent to both biological and adopted children and author of “Delly Duck: Why A Little Chick Couldn’t Stay With His Birth Mother”. The children’s book is about foster care and adoption, intended to support therapeutic life story work and more general discussions about adoption and fostering. I have a five year old birth daughter and two year old adopted son, who has been part of our family for just over a year.

Tell us about your book

I wrote “Delly Duck: Why A Little Chick Couldn’t Stay With His Birth Mother,” to help with some of the tricky and emotional questions that an adopted child (or another child trying to understand adoption) may have.

No two adoption stories are the same, so I included a lot of symbolism that the adult reading this story can interpret appropriately when reading it to a child. Delly Duck chasing butterflies may be interpreted as a metaphor for an addiction that existed pre-birth and that Delly sadly does not overcome. Alternatively, this frequent distraction may more simply represent memory and concentration problems that might arise from Delly’s own traumatic experiences, health issues or learning disability.

What age group is “Delly Duck: Why A Little Chick Couldn’t Stay with his Birth Mother” suitable for?

It’s quite a wide range really, because as the child gets older, they will be able to understand more from the metaphors. I recommend it from three years old but have had feedback that it has helped children with an emotional age of eight and nine years old to process their feelings and questions about adoption. I’ve also been contacted by a few adult adoptees who have adopted as well, and wanted to let me know that they bought it for their children, but also found it therapeutic for themselves.

The story made me root for Delly somehow, even though I could see that she wasn’t making the necessary changes to keep Little Chick. Was that your plan?

It was one of my main objectives actually! I wanted to ensure that the reader developed empathy for the birth parent character. I wanted them to see that Delly tried to make some changes (trying to build the nest, for example) and that the social worker tried to support her with advice and at times practical help, but sadly it was still not safe for Little Chick to stay with Delly.

I hope that the adoptive parents using this book to support therapeutic lifestory work, will use the opportunity to discuss the things that birth parents tried to do to keep their children. Hopefully this will ensure that children know that they are loved and wanted, as well as showing them that their adoptive parents do not villainise their birth parents and can be approached to discuss any feelings or questions the child may have about their birth family.

Similarly, I hope that parents use the story to relate to any help and advice that social services provided, so that they can explain that the decision to remove a child is not taken lightly and that birth parents do receive support.

I felt like Delly didn’t have any closure. She’s sad the last time we see her in the story. Why did you leave it like that?

Although it feels uncomfortable, I feel it would be disrespectful to the birth parents who have lost their children to adoption if I were to say that Delly was happy knowing that Little Chick was safe and loved. I imagine that Delly would be distraught and would worry about whether Little Chick was safe, healthy and happy in his new home, which she knows nothing about.

I did soften it a little in the story, where Delly agreed that Little Chick’s safety was the most important thing. This can be interpreted as Delly realising that, despite her attempts to provide a safe home, she will not be able to persuade Caring Goose that Little Chick will be consistently safe in her care. Most birth parents fight the process at least for a while, which is something the adult reading the story can discuss with the child.

I think it’s important to acknowledge that it’s sad. While I, as an adoptive mum, am so lucky to have such a fantastic child and I make sure he knows that I am so happy he is my son, I am acutely aware that his birth parents must miss him terribly. It’s important that he sees that empathy in me and knows he can ask me anything about them.

What inspired you to write a children’s book about adoption?

This book came to life while I was waiting for matching panel and having discussions with my birth daughter about adopting a younger sibling. My daughter asked me a lot of questions about all aspects of the process, but the thing she really struggled to get her head around was the separation of a child from his or her mother.

She rightly identified that this must be a difficult and distressing aspect of adoption, and couldn’t understand why a mother and child would or should ever be separated. I wanted to support her empathy towards the birth mother, while gently showing that the decision to remove a child from their mother would not have been taken lightly. Above all, I wanted to portray that all adults involved wanted the best for Little Chick, and that he is so very loved.

You can buy “Delly Duck: Why a Little Chick Couldn’t Stay With His Birth Mother” from Amazon. Holly’s website is a great resource for anyone wanting to know more about adoption. If you don’t follow her already on Instagram, go and say hello.

To read reviews and information about other adoption books, click here.

This interview includes an affiliate link for the book. That means if you click on the link in the article to Amazon, and then buy the book, I get paid a fee from Amazon.

As parents, we all have favourite outfits that we loved seeing our little ones wear. When you become an adoptive parent, those clothes hold a lot more than memories. They’re a reminder of the journey you’ve been on to find each other.

The clothing worn on the first day of introductions is so much more than material. The outfit will have been picked and probably bought by the foster carer. The amount of thought that was put into the outfit choice doesn’t matter. What does matter is the memories it will hold for you. A reminder of the day you became a parent.

So, what do we do with all these clothes that hold so many life changing memories? Keeping them “safe” in a drawer seems a bit pointless. The whole point is they evoke memories whenever we see them. So they need to be seen.

One of the reasons I created We Made a Wish, was so that we could sell clothing keepsakes to help keep all those precious memories accessible. My favourite in our collection are our keepsake blankets. We have one for each of the girls made from the clothes they wore during introductions.

Seeing the blankets takes me right back to introductions. Eldest’s in particular brings the memories flooding back. Her foster carer used a strong smelling fabric softener and even though it’s six years since she washed them, they still smell of it. As soon as I smell the blanket, it reminds me of the wonderful foster carer. That’s a lovely memory to be able to share with eldest too.

We sell blankets / quilts, cushion covers, initials and bags. If you have one particular item that means the world, we can make it into you little one’s initial or a bag for them to play with. The bag pictured below is made from the dress eldest wore the day after she came home.

If you’ve got a few more items, a cushion cover is a lovely option. We have cushion covers made of the clothes both kids wore for their first Christmases at home. I put them on the settees every year. Eldest loves looking at the clothes and then finding pictures on my phone of her wearing them.

Keepsakes are also a great tool to use for life story work. If you have the clothes your child came home from hospital in, they could be made into a blanket or cushion cover. That’s then a great starting point to talk about their early life, particularly if you know which member of birth family bought them.

Eldest loves looking at the photos from our introductions. She also loves that she can touch and snuggle into the clothes whenever she wants. It often starts questions about introductions which then usually leads to a conversation about her tummy mummy and her brothers and sisters.

Another great way of preserving the memories special items of clothing have, is to get them made into a cuddly toy. Once Upon a Time Keepsakes make these gorgeous bears from eight items of clothing. They’re a great, child friendly way of preserving the memories special clothing items hold for us.

I hope this article inspires you to get your treasured items of clothing made into something special that can be enjoyed by all the family. I’d love to hear about it if you do.

I’ve always been very honest about the fact that life story work terrified me. It felt like a lot of pressure to get it right and that there’d be no second chances with it. We needed to get it right first time. As with a lot of things, I put way too much pressure on myself. And in the end, it was a lot easier than I’d expected.

Eldest knows she didn’t grow in my tummy. We started to introduce this to her when she was about two so it’s all she’s ever known. That’s always how I’d hoped it would be. Adoption is clearly a massive thing, but I didn’t want it to feel like that to her. I want it to just part of who she is. She has two families and they both love her dearly.

We started with talking about her growing in her birth mum’s tummy. Then we introduced her life story book when she was old enough to understand it. I think she was about three. She’d started asking why she didn’t have a sister, so it seemed like a good time to start.

She dealt with it a lot better than I thought she would. Finding out she has brothers and sisters didn’t phase her. She took it in her stride and that’s the way she’s dealt with it ever since. When she wants to ask questions, she does. We answer them as honestly as we can. Sometimes that leads to further questions or a conversation. Sometimes it doesn’t. We don’t push her, we’re guided by what she wants to know. As she gets older, obviously, we’ll explain more.

At the moment, she’s happy to accept that her brothers and sisters live with their families. She knows that some live with their forever families, and that some don’t. At six she’s still too young to really understand what that means, but she will as she gets older.

I’ve also written about how I find it hard to write the yearly updates for letterbox contact. I do it because I know how important it is, but getting the tone right is always hard. I’ve read some great blogs and posts in the last year with advice about how to write them, so I’m hoping it will be easier this time. Eldest has said she’d like to do a picture so that will be a lovely thing for her to do.

Unfortunately, last year we didn’t get any responses to our update at all. We normally hear from two siblings, but got nothing back from them. Our agency amalgamated with others in our area so I’m hoping that it’s there somewhere, just filed in the wrong place. I haven’t chased it up yet but I will do.

Adopting her sister has really helped eldest understand things a bit more. She knows she lived with foster carers (they both lived with the same carers four years apart) after she was born until she came home. Books like Blanket Bears and The Family Fairies have helped her understanding too. They’re such lovely books that explain things beautifully.

When youngest came home, with the help of her teacher, eldest did a little presentation to her class about getting a new sister. I’m so proud of her for wanting to do that. Meeting her sister prompted more questions about her brothers and sisters, but she hadn’t really questioned why they don’t all live together.

The last few months have been different though with a lot more questions about her brothers in particular. She keeps asking for a baby brother so I think that’s what’s behind the questions. She’s been asking when she can meet them and says that she loves them so much and can’t wait to give them a hug. Hearing her say that broke my heart. I’m so glad she’s growing up thinking about her siblings because it’s building the foundations for them to have a good relationship when they’re older. But I’ve got no way of knowing whether the feeling is mutual. Or even if all her siblings know she exists.

I really hope her siblings are doing life story work and know about her and her sister. It would be great for them to know that they thought about each other a lot as they grew up. We’re encouraging her to draw them pictures and cards. Hopefully she can give them to her siblings in person one day.

That’s why we’ll continue to write annual updates, even if we don’t get a reply. Learning about their birth history is so important. It’s part of who they are and will help to shape who they become. I hope they both always feel that they can ask us anything about it and we’ll give them all the answers we have. And when the time is right, they’ll be able to take their relationship to the next level.