Children and young people in out-of-home care (OOHC) often face significant challenges in building and maintaining a sense of identity. The reasons for this can include trauma; separation from siblings and birth family; placement instability; cultural disconnection; a high turnover of case workers; and the difficult process of transitioning out of Care into independent life. This is against a backdrop of challenges within the sector itself, here in Australia as well as internationally.

Compounding the impacts of transitional living arrangements is disjointed record keeping, not only of formal, institutional documents, but of a personal and individual kind. Our study unpacks the impact of these challenges on young people's identity and investigates the potential of digital technology to support life story work to support a stronger sense of self, and therefore wellbeing, for young people with a Care experience.

While institutional records might tell someone why they were placed in Care, they rarely outline who and what that child was like. They rarely capture milestones, celebrations, day-to-day activities and the memories many of us take for granted. Many foster children and young adults also lack access to life story mementoes such as photos, letters, diaries, certificates. There are many stories of people with a Care experience who don’t even know what they looked like when they were young. 

Personal records represent tangible links to the past, acting as memory prompts that shape and inform the evolving story of the self. Given this cohort is already at a greater risk of mental illness than other young people, narrative gaps can put their wellbeing at short and long-term risk. For young people who have already faced significant disruption in family bonds and attachment, not-knowing their own personal history and having to navigate that not-knowing alone, can be devastating.

Within the sector, the importance of consistent record keeping is acknowledged as a part of Care policy, and various agencies and departments support the collection and documentation of young people’s personal experiences and stories through targeted archival practices. A particularly well-known method is Life Story Work (LSW), which centres on the collection and documentation of young people’s experiences, records and stories. 

LSW operates from the principle that personalised materials can support youth-centred narratives that connect children and young people not just to what ‘happened’ to them, as important as this is, but to memories, feelings and experiences. 

It is traditionally oriented around paper-based systems that are reliant on carers to keep and maintain. Record-keeping is core to the methodology and can include a family tree, school reports, awards and certificates, photos of and information about biological family, as well as information relating to everyday life.

While there is considerable research to demonstrate the benefits of LSW, there is also widespread evidence that, even with LSW implementation, many young people living in OOHC continue to leave care as young adults without precious belongings or essential identity documents. This is often due to placement instability, coupled with the loss of belongings and a de-prioritisation of personal record-keeping during times of crisis. 

Our initial research involved collaborating with the creators of a digital app called CaringLife to research its efficacy and to investigate LSW in both digital and print formats. After extensive engagement with Australia’s OOHC sector, our study is focusing on what we think is an urgent need for a national strategy that supports the implementation and mobilisation of consistent record-keeping and archival practices that are meaningful to young people and those who support them. We are particularly interested in mobilising the as-yet under-utilised opportunity to embed a digital platform into the more traditional practices at a national level.

We interviewed and surveyed young people in OOHC, caseworkers and carers, to collect data about their experiences using the digital app and a print version used by the sector in Australia called Life Story Book. We also surveyed and interviewed participants about their experiences of using other digital communication tools such as social media. 

While the print book suited some research participants, others reported that the book was difficult to maintain—stating it was time consuming, cumbersome and fragmented. It was also occasionally destroyed or lost. A digital app, on the other hand, was broadly seen as being more child-inclusive, and therefore more empowering for children and young people. A secure digital platform for storing and sharing stories, documents, and photographs, the app acts as a repository. It also serves as a creative hub where young people can gain agency over their narrative and more autonomy in story-making and recording their lives.

Drawing on a long history of scholarship and the interviews from our own research, we have found that digital tools have the potential to not only supplement the current personal life-story system, they can also increase and foster young people’s autonomy and ownership over the way their stories are remembered and told. However, there is still work to be done to communicate their efficacy, impact and potential integration within existing frameworks. Our research team is committed to advocating for the benefits of future Life Story Work (LSW) in a digital format in conjunction with more conventional formats. 

We are also committed to co-designing a systems-change strategy that can ensure all children and young people in Care have access to a life storying model best suited to their needs and circumstances.