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Lifebooks
Lifebooks are tools that can be useful in working with children in out-of-home care and children who have been adopted to record memories and life events that occurred prior to placement as well as when the children were in placement. Lifebooks can help children retain connections to people who have been important in their lives and may help the children integrate past experiences with their present circumstances in a healthy, constructive manner. The resources in this section provide tips for creating lifebooks.
Resources and tips for creating lifebooks
Adoption Lifebook: A Bridge to Your Child's Beginnings: A Workbook for International Adoptive Families
Probst (2004) (3rd edition)
Describes how to prepare lifebooks and directs parents through the process of writing about sensitive subjects with honesty, focusing on the child's and caregivers' strengths.
Adoption Lifebooks: Do's and Don'ts (PDF - 142 KB)
O'Malley (2004)
Describes how to compile a lifebook of an adopted child's history, including his or her birth, birth parents, reasons for adoption, and the adoptive family.
Before You Were Mine: Discovering Your Adopted Child's Lifestory
TeBos & Woodwyk (2007)
View Abstract
Guides parents in developing a lifebook for their adopted child. Chapters suggest themes of imagination, truth, honor, and exploration and includes reflective questions and writing exercises.
The Child's Own Story: Life Story Work With Traumatized Children
Rose & Philpot (2005)
View Abstract
Describes strategies for conducting life story work and applying it to therapy for children affected by trauma. Techniques can be used by adoption and foster care workers, social workers, psychologists, foster parents, mental health professionals, and other people who work with children.
Here I Am! A Lifebook Kit for Use With Children With Developmental Disabilities
Schroen & Halleen
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Outlines strategies and provides simple pictures to help developmentally disabled children understand why they do not live at home with their families. The kit may be used by social workers, therapists, residential and mental health staff, foster parents, and adoptive parents.
Kids and Lifebooks: Tips for Social Workers
O'Malley (2003)
Discusses using lifebooks as tools to help adopted and foster children work through difficult life transitions.
Lifebooks: A Lifebooks Course
Adoption Learning Partners
Explains the purpose of a lifebook and the need for parents to start or to continue to develop one. The course also identifies the components of a lifebook and the situations that may benefit from its use. The free course also helps parents develop pages of a child's lifebook.
My Foster Care Journey
O'Malley (2006)
Describes the process of creating a lifebook for children in the foster care system. Instructions are designed to help CASAs and agency workers. Suggestions are provided about including children's activity preferences, things they like about themselves, characteristics of their birth and foster families, happy memories about home, and feelings about their lives.
Scrapbook Mania
Adoptive Families (2009)
Offers tips and resources for adoptive and foster families for making lifebooks, memory books, and digital and paper scrapbooks.
Sample lifebooks
Lifebook Pages
Iowa Foster and Adoptive Parents Association (IFAPA)
Helps create opportunities for talking about the circumstances of the foster care and/or adoptive placement. IFAPA created these pages to allow a child to choose the pages that fit his or her style. They are available for free downloads.
Sample Lifebook for a 6 Year Old (PDF - 848 KB)
Zhen (2004)
Describes the birth and adoption story of a 6-year-old Chinese girl, including her understanding of why she was adopted and her feelings regarding her birth and foster families. Photos are included as well as space for drawings.
For When I'm Famous: A Teen Foster/Adopt Lifebook
O'Malley (2006)
Elicits personal information and thoughts from teens in foster care. Adolescents are asked what they would like their next birthday party to be like, their favorite things to do, information about their birth, baby pictures, family facts about their birth parents and siblings, why they are in foster care, and where they have lived.