What effect does Life Story Work have on Life Writing?

This practice-based research responds to the question ‘What effect does Life Story Work have on Life Writing’ by presenting both critical and creative writing that analyses the interactions and intersections between Life Story Work, medical humanities, and life writing. I like to think of this work as plaiting together concepts from these three areas, tied up with a bobble of practice research.

Life Story Work (LSW) is a “defined approach which provides the opportunity for children to explore their own history” (Rose, 2012: p26). This intervention aims to help children who are looked after by a local authority or adopted to ‘make sense of their pasts.’ LSW collects information from social services files and accounts from family members, previous carers and/ or other significant people in a young person’s life. The work is then scanned, collated, and worked through in a form of the child’s choosing, usually called a Life Story Book or Memory Box (Rose, 2012; Rees, 2012; Hooley, 2015). Despite LSW having existed for 60 years, it has ‘frequently been placed on the backburner’ of development within Social Work due to the ‘more pressing’ issues and legislations that have come over the years (Baynes, 2008). More recently, there has been a resurgence of discussions about LSW in critical social work. However, the links between life writing, medical humanities, and social work, along with outcomes of LSW, have yet to be examined in any detail.

To fill this gap, I offer an opportunity to examine an in-depth, autoethnographic case study of LSW experience. I write a memoir titled ‘The Memory Hotel’ (TMH) that uses my own Life Story Book and other documentation from my life (from both in and out of my time in care) as stimulus texts. Through TMH, I present several concepts: an account of care experience that considers both good and bad practice; a risky journey of discovering identity through a complicated series of entangled encounters and perspectives; along with examples of collective memories that might otherwise have been lost, and how these can be used to develop better understanding of oneself and other people involved in that person’s life. This allows me to present a well-rounded protagonist with a unique way of discussing traumatic events through humour, reflection, and a way with metaphors that does not shy away from the multiple sides of themselves.

My first chapter situates concepts I wish to explore (LSW, autobiographical and other types of memory, elements of life writing practice, medical humanities, and social work discussions). My second chapter analyses the precedents of practice (published care-experienced life writing). I then explore the concepts I discuss in Chapter 1 and ideas found in Chapter 2 in my creative practice in Chapter 3: The Memory Hotel. In Chapter 4 I reflect on the value of The Memory Hotel as research. Finally, in Chapter 5, I reflect on the effects LSW had on my life writing and present grounds for further research. This thesis contributes to new forms of knowledge by demonstrating different types of collective and autobiographical memory, as well as providing an autoethnographic case study of health and social care services. It goes on to explore how these experiences and memories affect the understanding of self and identity in care-experienced life writing.