Creative Storytelling with Children at Risk

Book excerpt: This practical book will improve the play skills - through storytelling and storywork - of anyone working with children, especially with children 'at risk', such as looked-after children, or children suffering from trauma or abuse. Strongly rooted in the story tradition - folk tales and fairy tales, myths and legends, the ancient tale as well as the child's own story - this book enables the play worker to create a safe structure in order for children to play and through playing, share stories through movement, painting, clay, sandplay or drama. A narrative approach is an effective means of enabling children to communicate their experiences, fears, hopes and dreams. This book includes guidelines on all the play techniques and advice on unexpected disclosure or extreme reaction. Above all, this book puts the playing back into storywork, whereby the children are able to discover their own strengths and creative skills; to improve their forming of secure attachments with adults; and, to begin to understand their own behaviours and swings of mood and to understand the importance of communication in social skills. For one reason or another, many children in difficulty are excluded: from their school, their family, their social or cultural group. The methods in this book develop a framework of inclusion that brings some joy into the process of storytelling and integrates it as a social and cultural form for the benefit of children who are at risk.