An Introduction to Life Story Work

An Introduction to Life Story Work

Life Story Work provides individuals with the opportunity to talk about their life experiences, memories and hopes for the future and record this in a creative way. It is a process that enables someone with an illness like dementia to reconnect with the important people and events across their life and can help clinicians to see the person and not the illness.

Within this course, a number of different methods for capturing the information are explored – whether this is a DVD, photograph album, collage, life story books, photo-story boards or a memory box – so that you can choose whatever method suits you best. You will have the opportunity to make and take away a creative piece of life story work.

This is an interactive session which will require you to bring an openness to share your positive life experiences in a group setting along with some materials such as valued photographs, or maybe one or two small items that hold meaning for you that you then feel comfortable discussing and sharing.

By the end of this course, you will:

• Have an understanding of what Life Story is and how this can help you to retain your wishes, values and beliefs

• Consider how having a Life Story can stimulate long term and short term memory

• Explore how having a Life Story can improve communication and conversations with those close to you, to further strengthen relationships and support networks that maintain your recovery.