Why Therapeutic Life Story Work is Important
"Many children who have suffered trauma and/or are in out-of-home care have a big thorn in their hearts that they live with.
This thorn may be attachment trauma, sexual trauma or any other kind of hurt that seems too confronting or difficult to discuss. Its presence affects how these young people behave, think of themselves and connect with others now and in the future.
Often, the people in the Young Person's life are unsure what to do about the thorn lest it hurt more or cause more damage. Just as often, Young People feel guilt or blame associated with that thorn.
The Young Person needs a specialist who can take the time to carefully and gently work with the Young Person to work that thorn-free, understand it and set it aside. Improving connections that help the Young Person better heal with the help of other specialists like psychologists, social workers, caregivers and mentors.
Enter the TLSW Practitioner!"
Chloe Webster
Director
Bright Hearts Ltd
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What is TLSW, and what does it do?
Therapeutic Life Story Work (TLSW) is a powerful evidence-based therapeutic intervention that supports positive healing and emotional connections between Young People and the people in their world. It does this by helping Young People to understand and create their life story through a therapeutic process over several months of direct work with the young person and their primary carer. Studies have shown that the Rose model of TLSW (2012) facilitates an "increased sense of self-identity, strengthened attachment with a caregiver, increased pro-social behaviours, decreased anti-social and negative behaviours and emotions. It is therefore recommended that TLSW is offered to all children and young people in OOHC as an initial phase of trauma treatment and recovery-focussed model of OOHC care." (Faculty of Health Deakin University, 2022).
How Is It Done?
A certified practitioner with a professional diploma in the Rose Model of Therapeutic Life Story Work undertakes the body of TLSW work with the Young Person and their primary carer.
Click here to read the latest results of the Barwon Pilot Study by MacKillop & Deakin University.
Click here to learn the difference between TLSW and standard Life Story Work.
TLSW has three stages:
Stage One: Information-gathering
Stage Two: Direct work with the Young Person and their Primary Carer
Stage three: The creation of a Life Story Book
Stage One The Information-Gathering Stage is done through hours of interviews and research. At the end of this stage, the TLSW practitioner has an evidenced timeline of the young person's life and heritage, usually dating from their grandparents to the current time in the Young Person's Life. This also includes interviewing, where possible, birth family members, creation of a family tree, any relevant medical or legal reports, details of birth and photographs and notes, the correlation of any existing standard life story artefacts into the information bank and anything else significant.
Stage Two: Direct work with the Young Person and their Primary Carer is done over approximately 18 sessions. The Rose Model of TLSW is founded in Humanistic principles; that is to say, throughout the process, the Young Person is held at the centre of the work, and the number and length of sessions can vary depending on the Young Person.
With Bright Stories, each Young Person is presented with their own TLSW kit to keep.
20 Faber-Castell Connector Pens
A handmade Think, Feel Do Bear
Three age-appropriate therapeutic tools for emotional self-regulation.
A storage container for materials
Stationery kit in a pencil case
A 30m roll of wallpaper in
A handmade cover for the wallpaper
2 Games
A Jenga Set
Anything else specific to the Young Persons' needs or abilities.
In these sessions, the practitioner and caregiver listen to the young person's understanding and feelings about their life story, establishing a safe and open communication process centred around the young person.
Using age-appropriate creative tools and artwork, the practitioner introduces evidence-based concepts of psychodynamic exploration to the young person and carer. Put more simply, the process looks at how a person thinks, feels and does and how that is often influenced by what has happened to them and their past. The information bank is used at an age-appropriate level to understand what has happened and why.
It is the powerful act of exchanging the question "What's wrong with you!?" with the question "What happened to you?" (Winfrey & Perry MD, PhD, 2021).
At the Young Person's pace, using these therapeutic tools, they are introduced to their heritage and life story, which is all recorded on the wallpaper over many months of TLSW sessions. At the end, the Young Person selects the parts they want to include in their Life Story Book.
Stage Three: The creation of a Life Story Book.
The Life Story Book is created over approximately 10 hours from a selection of information from the information bank and therapeutic artwork and records on the wallpaper that the Young person has selected.
At Bright Stories, we create this book using Canva and the Young Person is given a digital copy and a hard copy of this book.
The hard copy is in a good-quality binder with sturdy paper sleeves and is printed in high-quality full colour. This allows the young person to add to their story after completing the TLSW process.
What Next?
To book an interview with a practitioner and receive a quote for Therapeutic Life Story Work for your Young Person or Yourself, please click the connect button at the bottom of this page to get in touch or book a free Q&A with our practitioner.
Due to the dynamic nature of the Rose Model of TLSW, at Bright Stories, WE CAN undertake this work with Young People with impaired mobility, vision or hearing, neurodiversity or language barriers.
Chloe intentionally pursues a greater understanding and relationship with First Nations culture and the languages, songlines and Country of the D'harawhal and Dhurga Peoples of the Yuin Nation, amongst which she is grateful to be able to live and work. She recognises the effects of the ongoing colonial trauma to our First Nations People. She also sees the over-representation of First Nations children in out-of-home care as an echo of that trauma and is passionate about prioritising healing in that space through ensuring that reaching for excellence in Cultural Practice is a core value of Bright Hearts and Bright Stories.
Chloe has extensive experience working with Young People and their caregivers in a well-being and therapeutic capacity. She is a Qualified Student Wellbeing Officer contracted to the Department of Education NSW in the Shoalhaven. She is experienced in responding to client needs, including supporting mental health around trauma, grief and loss. She has been a therapeutic mentor for many years, working with attachment trauma recovery and learned helplessness. She has completed a Professional Diploma in the Rose Model of Therapeutic Life Story Work and is a Student at Deakin University, Studying for her Master's in Child Therapeutic Play. She has also studied behavioural science and sociology for a decade.
Most importantly, she has been on the ground doing direct work with young people and their families for two decades and still has a love for that calling that only grows every day. In these roles, she has been passionate about using creativity and play for healing throughout her entire career and has spent hundreds of hours studying and practising the science behind why this works and how to best use creativity and play with evidence-based humanistic & psychodynamic principles to help Young People in her Therapeutic Practice. She is passionate about breaking generational cycles of trauma and hurt in her Nation, and that is why she does what she does and is on the board of directors of Bright Hearts Ltd.
In her spare time, Chloe loves to talk to her friends and strangers. She loves writing, reading books, and learning new things despite being dyslexic and neurodiverse. For this reason, her family describe her as "Mum" and "Book Dragon." She also enjoys noticing birds and playing the cello badly while hoping she may one day play it well. She is an active part of her community.
Welcome to the TLSW world, if you haven't heard of it before be assured that TLSW is not some wild new therapeutic intervention; it is evidence-based and has been around for thirty years originating in the UK. Practitioners all stem from other relevant fields for instance sociology, psychology, education or Therapeutic Home Based Care and after meeting the prerequisite requirements are trained and certified through TLSWi in a professional diploma of TLSW. Practitioners also undertake clinical supervision and ongoing professional development.
In 2022 MacKillop Family Services and Deakin University released the findings of the Barwon Pilot Study. These findings provided evidence of the transformational nature of The Rose Model of Therapeutic Life Story Work. They also recommended that TLSW be available for all Young People in out-of-home care. The Barwon Study also found that TLSW helps young people make sense of their trauma, providing a scaffolding, context and skills for social and emotional well-being as well as an improved sense of identity. It is a unique therapeutic intervention due to its humanistic structure therefore, each intervention is effective, dynamic and responsive to each Young Person and their situation.
You can listen to the findings here or Download the full Therapeutic Life Story Work - Barwon Pilot Final Evaluation here.
Rose Model of Therapeutic Life Story Work (TLSW) V's Standard Life Story Work
Standard "Life Story Work" should compile a young person's significant moments details, photos and letters. In a perfect world, this is hopefully maintained by changing carers, placements and workers in the young person's life. Unfortunately, this is very rarely the case.
Even when the records of a young person's story have been kept, for most young people, by the time they exit care, they will often have a fractured body of information with little context that often leaves out the burning question: Why? More than that, they may be blind-sighted by all the confronting answers to that burning question when, at 18 years old, they read them in their files.
"It is hard to define the essence and worth of anything that is removed or separated from its context and truth, especially when that which needs to be discovered is one's self."
- C.L.E Webster
The Rose Model of Therapeutic Life Story Work tells the story honestly through a therapeutic process at an age-appropriate level to help the young person understand their past and scaffold their future understanding. The certified practitioner of The Rose Model of TLSW is the gatekeeper of a robust information bank that can be drawn on to help young people understand and process what they have been through. This process also strengthens the connection and understanding between the Carer and the Young Person. As well as the Young Person's identity and Future relationships with others.
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