Life Stories Printable

Life stories
2 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

About this free course
This free course course provides a sample of Level 1 study in Health and Social Care:
http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/find/health-and-social-care.
This version of the content may include video, images and interactive content that may not be optimised
for your device.
You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free
learning from The Open University -
www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0.
There you’ll also be able to track your progress via your activity record, which you can use to
demonstrate your learning.
The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA
Copyright © 2016 The Open University
Intellectual property
Unless otherwise stated, this resource is released under the terms of the Creative Commons Licence
v4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_GB. Within that The Open University
interprets this licence in the following way:
www.open.edu/openlearn/about-openlearn/frequently-asked-questions-on-openlearn. Copyright and
rights falling outside the terms of the Creative Commons Licence are retained or controlled by The Open
University. Please read the full text before using any of the content.
We believe the primary barrier to accessing high-quality educational experiences is cost, which is why
we aim to publish as much free content as possible under an open licence. If it proves difficult to release
content under our preferred Creative Commons licence (e.g. because we can’t afford or gain the
clearances or find suitable alternatives), we will still release the materials for free under a personal end-
user licence.
This is because the learning experience will always be the same high quality offering and that should
always be seen as positive – even if at times the licensing is different to Creative Commons.
When using the content you must attribute us (The Open University) (the OU) and any identified author in
accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Licence.
The Acknowledgements section is used to list, amongst other things, third party (Proprietary), licensed
content which is not subject to Creative Commons licensing. Proprietary content must be used (retained)
intact and in context to the content at all times.
The Acknowledgements section is also used to bring to your attention any other Special Restrictions
which may apply to the content. For example there may be times when the Creative Commons Non-
Commercial Sharealike licence does not apply to any of the content even if owned by us (The Open
University). In these instances, unless stated otherwise, the content may be used for personal and non-
commercial use.
We have also identified as Proprietary other material included in the content which is not subject to
Creative Commons Licence. These are OU logos, trading names and may extend to certain
photographic and video images and sound recordings and any other material as may be brought to your
attention.
Unauthorised use of any of the content may constitute a breach of the terms and conditions and/or
intellectual property laws.
We reserve the right to alter, amend or bring to an end any terms and conditions provided here without
notice.
All rights falling outside the terms of the Creative Commons licence are retained or controlled by The
Open University.
Head of Intellectual Property, The Open University

The Open University.
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield
Contents
Introduction 5
Learning Outcomes 6
1 Life experience as everyday talk 7
1.1 Life stories 7
1.2 Where can you find life stories? 9
1.3 Your past experiences 11
2 Working with memories – life storybooks 15
Conclusion 19
Keep on learning 20
Acknowledgements 20

Introduction
Introduction
This course examines life stories. It looks at the way in which objects, trends, cultures or
disabilities may contribute to a person's identity. This course also considers the
contribution that our own life stories make to who we are, and how remembering and
revisiting our past may help us to move forward with our lives.
This OpenLearn course provides a sample of Level 1 study in Health and Social Care.

Learning Outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
● outline how encouraging people to talk about the past can be a way of helping them to manage change in their
lives and establish identity in the present
● demonstrate an understanding of the basic principles in life story work which could apply at any age or stage of
life
● appreciate that life story work is as much about dealing with the present and preparing for the future as it is
sorting out feelings about the past.
1 Life experience as everyday talk
1.1 Life stories

Talking about our own personal experience may be important in care relationships, but
isn't talking about your own life something that goes on all the time?
Activity 1: The personal as public property

This is the sort of activity you can do as and when. Just carry on with the course at
present and keep an eye out for any personal stories in your leisure time.
When you've got a moment, or feel like taking a short break from this course, check
through the newspapers, magazines, television, radio and film listings, books and
adverts which have come your way recently. How many of them carry a personal story
about the past or include someone talking about their own life as an illustration or
source of information? We've assembled a few examples in the collage below. Looking
through them, what kind of messages do you think they attempt to convey?

Figure 1 Personal experience seems to get into everything

You might find yourself overwhelmed by the amount of personal detail that's available.
You might also have noticed that personal history and biography has found its way into
all sorts of different kinds of information: advertising, fundraising, leisure activities,
entertainment. The messages in the clippings included in the collage seem to be about
identifying with the people shown by calling up emotions and experiences which may
be shared. Personalising accounts with stories of real people, or making them seem
real by quoting their words, using their actual names, or showing images from earlier in
their lives makes it more likely that we'll pause and get ‘hooked’ by what we read.
Sometimes these images are difficult to pass by.
1.2 Where can you find life stories?

Life stories are everywhere. In adverts, magazines, music, sport, politics, chat shows, the
messages we get are personalised through interviews and stories which tell us about
quite intimate details of people's lives, feelings, emotions and even what feel like secrets.
Autobiography and personal accounts have also become increasingly common means of
revealing different versions of the past, with television and radio programmes focusing on
‘ordinary’ life events or the stories of ‘ordinary’ people. The better-known entertain with
personal histories in ‘Desert Island Discs’, ‘In the Psychiatrist's Chair’ and ‘This is Your
Life’. Family historians draw on the stories people tell about their relatives to research
their family trees. Publishers record greater-than-ever sales for biographies and
autobiographies. And it seems that the demand for opportunities to talk about oneself has
never been higher. Counselling activities now account for a large part of the job market. It
has been estimated that ‘over 2.5 million use counselling as a major part of their job’.
(Persaud, 1993, pp. 8–9)
Biography and autobiography go back a long way. But it seems that it was in the
nineteenth century that interest really took off. For example, life stories as examples of
achievement were very popular. The most famous of these was Samuel Smiles’ classic
study Self Help, first published in 1859, which included examples of famous businessmen,
artists and scientists. Other nineteenth century writers celebrated their religious
conversion, while others again, as working men, wrote accounts of their lives for the
entertainment of better-off sections of society (Thompson, 1988, pp. 34–35). In 1831,
Mary Prince, a runaway ex-slave living in England, published her autobiography, The
History of Mary Prince (Ferguson, 1993). It became a bestseller and a major contribution
to the campaign to abolish the slavery of black people. Other nineteenth century
reformers drew directly on the experiences of poor people to shock their audiences into
action. The journalist Henry Mayhew interviewed child workers in London streets
around 1850. One of his most poignant accounts came from an eight-year-old girl working
as a watercress seller who told him:
On and off, I've been very near a twelvemonth in the streets. Before that, I had
to take care of a baby for my aunt. No, it wasn't heavy – it was only twelve
months old; but I minded it for ever such a time – till it could walk. It was a very
nice little baby, not a very pretty one; but if I touched it under the chin, it would
laugh. Before I had the baby, I used to help mother, who was in the fur trade;
and if there was any slits in the fur, I'd sew them up. My mother learned me to
needlework and to knit when I was about five…

(Quoted in Davin, 1996, p. 158)
Figure 2 Original illustration from Henry Mayhem's London Labour and the London Poor,
1861–2
More recently, disabled people have used their own personal histories to develop a
collective awareness of themselves as a group sharing the same struggles against a
disabling society. Barbara Lisicki remembers:
I wasn't a stranger to impairments because it had been born into my family,

both my father and brother had impairments. Actually, my consciousness was
from a very early age of really having to fight other people's voyeurism and
curiosity. Me and my other brother used to pile in the noddy car with Andrew

and we used to drive around. But when people used to stare at us when we
went out together I used to say ‘What do you think you are staring at?’ Even as
a kid I was on one level challenging people's behaviour towards disabled
people even though I wasn't a disabled person at that time.
(Quoted in Campbell and Oliver, 1996, p. 36)
1.3 Your past experiences

Telling about your past experience, autobiography, is not just a question of ensuring that
the record of the past is complete and representative. What also seems to be important is
a need to tell. Giddens discusses the way in which self-identity is sustained through the
constant retelling of biographical stories, drawing in new experiences, relating to other
people and says that these are resources, helpful because: ‘a sense of self-identity is
often securely enough held to weather major tensions or transitions in the social
environments within which the person moves’ (Giddens, 1991, p. 55).
The playwright Dennis Potter was someone for whom a personal sense of the past was
clearly important. Though he used popular songs to evoke memories in his TV plays
‘Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective, he resisted the idea that this might be
simply nostalgia:
… your own culture, your own language, your own communality which you
shared with your forebears – is actually shaping the future, too. It's people
without a sense of the past who are alienated and rootless, and they're losers;
they lose out.
To make any political statement you first of all have to know who and what you
are; what shaped your life, what is possible and what isn't. That's not nostalgia.
That's a kind of grappling with the past – an ache for it, perhaps sometimes a
contempt for it. But the past commingles with everything you do and everything
you project forward.
(Quoted in Fuller, 1993, p. 23)
Dennis Potter is suggesting that people fashion identities from those bits of their past
which enable them to cope with changes in society and the uncertainties and complexities
they have to cope with on a daily basis. He makes a link between the past and the
present. We use our memories of what was to tell ourselves the story of who we are now.
Psychologists see this telling and narrating as beginning very early in life, often before
children acquire proper speech. In this way our memories about ourselves come about
through interactions with others, usually our parents. Here's an example where Paul (4
years 3 months) and Rebecca (5 years 10 months) are looking at photographs with their
mother:
Mother: Do you remember being on this beach?

Paul: yuk, no.
Mother: don't you, when we went to Jersey, on the aeroplane, do you not
remember that?
Paul: is that Jersey?
Mother: mm, look Rebecca's wearing a hat that says Jersey on it

Paul: look, what is that?

Mother: […] probably a book – we were going to go on that boat or a trip down
the river and we took one or two books to keep you two occupied.
(Middleton and Edwards, 1990, p. 40)
Figure 3 Sharing memories

Paul's mother not only prompted him and helped him to recall events, she also showed
him how to remember, by pointing out clues like his sister's hat and the book. It is in such
ways that remembering becomes very much part of our inner lives, helping us to build up
meaningful accounts of who we are. Psychologists interested in reminiscence point out
the important role which such interactions play in developing a sense of the self in relation
to others in children beginning well before the age of two (Fivush and Reese, 2002).
The importance of protecting memory is something which is emphasised in what are
called Preparation Groups, where carers learn about the many different aspects of
fostering and adoption. One activity invites them to ‘randomly list’ their own memories of
childhood, both good and bad. The group facilitator writes these onto a flip chart and when
there are plenty of ‘memories’ the list is torn in two. This dramatic action is meant as a
reminder that this is what can happen to children's memories if they are not ‘held’ and
protected by their carers. The group then goes on to discuss how carers can help children
to hold and develop their memories.
Establishing an identity by remembering events from the past can be an important way of
building links and establishing what is shared and common in groups of people as well as
among people whose life experience may have been quite isolating or distant from what
are seen as ‘normal’ life events. Atkinson found in her work with a group of older men and
women with learning difficulties that by telling their experiences of hospital life they were
able to identify shared memories and spark off forgotten ones. The group was going
through the experience of leaving hospital and moving into the community. It was
particularly important for them to be able to individualise their past experience because
they were people who had been living institutionalised lives; it was also important for them
to build up an account of hospital life which they could cope with and not continue to feel

oppressed by. She includes an example from Godfrey and Marjorie who happened to be
in the same hospital at the same time:
Marjorie: After 20 years we changed over, and it was Sister ‘Smith’

Godfrey: Was she on the children's ward?
Marjorie: She was on F2. And then we had ‘Moffat’. She was on Fl. She died in
the end
Godfrey: She was a wicked old devil, she was! No wonder she died!
Marjorie: Old devil?
Godfrey: Yes!
Marjorie: You're telling me! And Smith!
(Atkinson, 1997, p. 65)
Not only were Godfrey and Marjorie and the other members of this group able to talk
about their own individual experiences but through sharing their memories they also
began to develop a particular group experience of hospital life. Sharing memories of long-
term hospitalisation was painful for this group but they found that they could share some
humorous memories of those times as well.
Activity 2 Different memories and shared memories

0 hour(s) 10 minutes(s)
Look back through some of the quotes and images included so far in this course. Do
any of the accounts remind you of things that have happened in your own life? They
may have been pleasant or painful memories. Perhaps things came back that you
thought you had forgotten. Perhaps certain words triggered off particular memories to
do with holidays, first experiences of training in a hospital, or perhaps it was an
association with a television programme or particular piece of advertising. Jot down
some key words for yourself as a reminder and add any particular things you associate
with them. These might be places, people or things about yourself.
Holidays: I looked back and remembered a holiday in North Berwick when I was eight
– my mother and I stayed at a hotel where we got to know lots of strangers. Car
journeys: being sick in the back of my uncle's new car – I think it was the combination
of the smell of the leatherette seats and the matches he kept striking to light his pipe.
One of our course testers found this activity ‘… almost amusing! I was amazed at what
I remembered. Falling in a bed of nettles, school dinners complete with a caterpillar,
living with my grandma … and much more.’
We've seen that talking about the past and listening to accounts of personal experience
has become a popular and well documented activity. But why are stories and memories
from people's pasts important for work in health and social care? Drawing on what you've
just read there are a number of key points to be made.

Key points
● Giving attention to memories means sharing and recognising aspects of each
other's lives and perhaps acknowledging and understanding differences in
experience.
● Memories help to make public accounts which enlighten and serve to raise
awareness of hidden or stigmatised experience. Henry Mayhew was something of
a pioneer in that respect.
● Encouraging people to talk about the past can be a way of helping them to
manage change in their lives and establish identity in the present.
In the rest of this course we go on to look at some of these issues in more detail and to
consider some explanations about the development and expression of identity at different
life stages. Drawing on examples from childhood, the middle years of life and old age we
look at examples of how talk about the past can help in the development of supportive
strategies and lead to sensitive and appropriate practice with individual people. We begin
with an example of life story work with a young person who has experienced fostering and
residential childcare.

2 Working with memories – life storybooks

Life story books are used more and more by social workers, residential care staff and
some foster parents with young people who, for various reasons, need to find ways to
remember and talk about earlier parts of their lives. The books may take a variety of
forms: photograph albums, scrapbooks, written accounts and audio and video recordings.
They may include drawings, poems, family trees, letters, bus and train tickets,
photographs, writing and all sorts of ephemera that evoke the past, or provide clues to
identity and individual histories. Children who grow up in the families they are born into
usually have plenty of opportunities to find out about their parents and wider family
members, the places they have lived in and the reasons for any changes they've
experienced. Children who experience separation from their birth families often face
greater obstacles when it comes to finding out about parents, grandparents, homes and
communities they've lived in. There may be gaps and difficult areas in accounts of their
identity and they may have to work out ways of dealing with difficult memories and
emotions. They need to be able to explain what has happened to them and to move on to
develop plans for the future. People working with children find that a life story book can
help a child to talk about losses, changes and separations and to remember the good
things they've experienced too.
Jamie Knight is 21. He lives with his girlfriend and baby daughter. He hasn't lived with both
his parents since he was five. He's experienced many changes in his life. We recorded
him talking to Sarah Burrows, who used to be his residential care keyworker, about how
they made a life story book when he was 10.
Click for Audio: Jamie and Sarah
Audio content is not available in this format.

Jamie and Sarah
Activity 3: Life story work

Figure 4 On the beach at Southend: Jamie aged 10 with Sarah Burrows and Jamie
Knight at the time of the recording
Listen to the Audio clip. You may need to listen to Jamie and Sarah twice while you
make notes.
While you are listening, note down:
1. some of the things Jamie mentions collecting for his life story book
2. some of the feelings and emotions he and Sarah mention while they were making
the book.

1. Some of the things Jamie mentions are: the date his mum and dad were married
and his birth date, ‘all written on nice little cards’, some of his own writing, some
baby photos, pictures of him taken outside his father's and mother's houses, more
dates and several photos taken by his first foster mother, photos of himself and
his foster mother when he went back to Southend, a picture taken of the social
services building, photos from the time he was in residential care, his birth
certificate and photos taken when he was advertised for fostering as a teenager.
2. Jamie and Sarah mention various feelings and emotions. Jamie says making the
book was ‘good’. Sarah says he was ‘an angry little boy, very upset,
abandoned…’. She says it was ‘hard’ and ‘quite overwhelming’ going back to see
his foster mother while they were researching what to put in the book, because it
was ‘somebody from your past’. The picture of the social services building is ‘sad’
to Jamie. Sarah points out that the ‘pictures and things’ don't really show the
whole process which was actually ‘difficult for Jamie to do’, particularly
remembering his mother whom he hadn't seen since he was five (and still hasn't).
One of our course testers who was abused as a child said that she could ‘totally
relate’ to the process that Jamie went through. She had felt almost anonymous,
without a childhood, until she was 40. Once she realised that she had been
emotionally abused she was able to understand why she had never loved her
mother. She says she is certain that knowing about her childhood is important to
her as an adult. When she became able to remember what happened her feelings
about her mother became acceptable to her.
It's important to note that some of the things that happened to Jamie couldn't happen
today. The 1989 Children Act (England and Wales) no longer allows what Sarah describes
as ‘the voluntary care route’ through which his father put him into care when he was eight,
although it does allow for children to be ‘accommodated’ at the request of those with
parental responsibility. And of course we'd hope that in working with a child like Jamie
social workers might be more careful to help him keep more of the photographs and
personal things which anyone needs to look back through their lives. Making life story
books with children who have become separated from their original families is now
established as good practice, particularly since the Children Act of 1989 with its emphasis
on partnership in working relationships with parents and carers. Tony Ryan and Roger
Walker have helped children make life story books for many years – they emphasise that
good practice means ‘listening to children and respecting their views’ but also warn that it
may not always be appropriate for every child and that it should never be used as a
substitute for ‘skilled and long-term therapy’ (Ryan and Walker, 1999, p. 4). Nevertheless
they argue that:
Life story work can increase a child's sense of self-esteem, because, sadly, at
the back of the minds of nearly all children separated from their families of
origin is the thought that they are worthless and unlovable. They blame
themselves for the actions of adults.
(p. 6)
Ryan and Walker stress the importance of identity and point out that the ‘creation of the
idea of “self” is crucial to healthy development’ and that children who have been ‘severed
from their roots and [who are] without a clear future’ can be helped if they ‘talk about the
past, the present and the future’ (pp. 6–7). Sarah Burrows started the life history with

Jamie Knight at a time when he was about to be fostered. She saw it as a way to help him
talk about his feelings and perhaps not blame himself or his parents for his past as part of
preparation for the future. Jamie had very little left of his early years. Just a few things
seem to stand out. At one point when Sarah asks him about his visits to his dad's new
family he says ‘I can't really remember, I can only remember things that are written down
here.’ The importance to Jamie of piecing together these fragments comes through very
strongly, particularly since his own file was destroyed in a fire.
For Jamie, as with other young people who become involved in making life story books,
this is a process which has no end. He points out that he can go on adding to it now and it
has helped him to remember things about his sister from whom he became separated
when he was taken into care and whom he's now thinking of contacting.
Click to view Why do Life Story books work?
Activity 4 Life story work: developing awareness

You should now read the extract above (click on 'view document'). This is the
introduction to Ryan and Walker's book, Life Story Work, I quoted from above. Read
through the extract and, as you do, note down:
1. some of the basic principles they advocate as essential for this work
2. how many of these principles you would say apply only to work with children and
young people.
1. The basic principles I noted down included:

Rights: ‘children are entitled to an accurate knowledge of their past and families’.
Patience and sensitivity: the process may take time and may develop at a varied
pace over days; letting the child be the guide to what is to be told and how.
Confidentiality: being trustworthy and being aware that a child might be telling a
private story that is not for public consumption.
2. You may have felt like me that on just about every point these principles might
apply at any age or stage of life or situation. However, where an adult is
concerned there might be a question raised over how family members might be
involved or participate. This might be particularly important in relation to people
with learning disabilities whose status as adults may not easily be accepted by
parents. Think back to Lynne and her father and ask yourself how easy it would
be for her to make her own life story book with her father's involvement and
participation.
The British Association of Adoption and Fostering (BAFF) has produced a life story work
book for children to write, draw and stick pictures in as well as guidance for an adult doing
life story work with a child. The book also includes pages for children adopted from
overseas or with a disability to record information and encourages children to record their
thoughts and their feelings.

Key points
● Children who have had experience of separation and loss in their lives can be
helped to deal with this through finding ways to tell their life stories.
● Life story work is as much about dealing with the present and preparing for the
future as it is sorting out feelings about the past.
● Life story work may not be appropriate for every child and the child's wishes
should be respected at all stages.
● There are basic principles in life story work which could apply at any age or stage
of life.

Conclusion
Conclusion
This free course provided an introduction to studying Health and Social Care. It took you
through a series of exercises designed to develop your approach to study and learning at
a distance and helped to improve your confidence as an independent learner.

Keep on learning
Keep on learning
Study another free course

There are more than 800 courses on OpenLearn for you to choose from on a range of
subjects.
Find out more about all our free courses.
Take your studies further

Find out more about studying with The Open University by visiting our online prospectus.
If you are new to university study, you may be interested in our Access Courses or
Certificates.
What’s new from OpenLearn?

Sign up to our newsletter or view a sample.
For reference, full URLs to pages listed above:

OpenLearn – www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses
Visiting our online prospectus – www.open.ac.uk/courses
Access Courses – www.open.ac.uk/courses/do-it/access
Certificates – www.open.ac.uk/courses/certificates-he
Newsletter –
www.open.edu/openlearn/about-openlearn/subscribe-the-openlearn-newsletter
Acknowledgements
The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used
under licence.

Acknowledgements
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following source for permission to reproduce

material in this course:
Course image: Andrew Bowden in Flickr made available under
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence.
Table 1: Department of Health 1994, On the State of the Public Health: The Annual
Report of the Chief Medical Officer of Health for the Year 1994, © Crown Copyright.
Reproduced with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
nevit
Don't miss out:
If reading this text has inspired you to learn more, you may be interested in joining the
millions of people who discover our free learning resources and qualifications by visiting
The Open University - www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses

Life Stories Printable

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Life Stories Printable

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Life stories

2 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

3 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

4 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

5 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

1 Life experience as everyday talk

1.1 Life stories

Activity 1: The personal as public property

7 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

Figure 1 Personal experience seems to get into everything

8 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

1.2 Where can you find life stories?

9 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

(Quoted in Davin, 1996, p. 158)

I wasn't a stranger to impairments because it had been born into my family,

10 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

1.3 Your past experiences

Mother: Do you remember being on this beach?

11 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

Paul: look, what is that?

Figure 3 Sharing memories

12 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

Marjorie: After 20 years we changed over, and it was Sister ‘Smith’

Activity 2 Different memories and shared memories

13 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

14 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

2 Working with memories – life storybooks

Audio content is not available in this format.

Activity 3: Life story work

15 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

16 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

Activity 4 Life story work: developing awareness

1. The basic principles I noted down included:

17 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

18 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

19 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

Study another free course

Take your studies further

What’s new from OpenLearn?

For reference, full URLs to pages listed above:

20 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following source for permission to reproduce

21 of 21 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care/life-stories/content-section-0?utm_source=openlearnutm_campaign=olutm_medium=ebook Wednesday 10 July 2019

You might also like