All adopted children must be provided with a life story about their life, traditionally this is a book which gives them information regarding their life history and how they came to require adoption. Life story is the responsibility of the child’s local authority.

Helping your child understand their life history is a crucial part of the role of being an adopter and can really support the building of strong relationships between you and your child. However, sometimes you or your child, may need a little additional support with this.

Members of the ARC Adoption team are qualified to Diploma level in Therapeutic Life Story Work for looked after children and have built up a reputation for providing high quality life story work gaining recognition from both Ofsted and the Department for Education.

We provide high quality traditional life story books for adopters and children to share and ensure adopted children have a good understanding of their life history and why they were adopted.

Digital life story ARCBOX

Passionate about life story work, we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of innovation and have therefore developed a digital life story tool to enable children to contribute and remain at the centre of their own digital life story.

Created out of a belief that every child deserves to have easily accessible, high quality, up to date information about their life, from their life history to present day, our digital life story platform ARCBOX is an innovative, organic and dynamic, digital life story platform.

It is a personalised, fun to use, lasting digital record of a child’s life providing a coherent narrative of their own life story up to the present day.

Unlike a traditional life story book, ARCBOX is instant and enables significant people within a child’s life to contribute to their life story in real time, resulting in a truly ‘living’ chronology, rather than a fixed historical document. Children and their family can continue to contribute throughout their lives.

The interactive, digital format makes ARCBOX an excellent therapeutic tool for helping children engage with and understand their life history. It is possible to upload approved images, audio, and text which are displayed within an easily accessible timeline, viewed only by the person contributing the information, the life story editor and ultimately, the child.

All contributions must be approved by the life story editor (usually the child’s social worker, other professional, or adopter) before they can be viewed by the child.

If you are interested in finding out more about Life story or Digital Life Story tool ARCBOX please contact [email protected] or 0191 516 6466.