How practitioners make sense of expressive story writing and how that can be experienced as therapeutic

This research explores expressive story writing and how that can be experienced as therapeutic. Therapeutic Story Writing Groups (TSWGs) are an expressive story writing intervention that can be used in Educational Psychology (EP) practice and were being delivered in the local authority (LA) I worked in. Previous research into TSWG has used quantitative methodologies and their associated paradigm(s) and none explored the experiences of either facilitators or CYP in qualitative depth. I was interested in how practitioners view the ways TSWGs could support creativity and self-expression in Key Stage 2 students. From a contextualist epistemology and critical realist ontology, reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse participant interview transcripts, allowing their truths to be validated whilst acknowledging existing structures and instances of power within schools and LA services. Key messages from analysis were: that TSWGs provide something different for children to their usual school experience; that facilitators are not exempt from systemic pressures; that practitioners adapted the intervention’s structure and delivery; that children are given opportunities to make social connections and voice worries; that most children could express themselves comfortably through a process of exploration and externalisation; that the group felt like a relational space, which promoted equalizing and connectedness; that practitioners valued the intervention for building children’s emotional literacy; that practitioners felt children’s confidence generally increased during the sessions; and that there was a sense of transformation taking place in children. Building children’s emotional literacy and providing a sense of transformation in a six-week period demonstrates the potential impact of this relatively low-cost therapeutic and expressive story writing intervention. The benefits of TSWGs reported here indicate that TSWGs could be usefully adopted within LAs to support children, particularly those in Key Stage 2. EPs in most LAs are well placed to train and supervise practitioners in delivering such groups.