About StorySharing™
The theory of Storysharing™
The development of Storysharing™
Exemplar case study
How can I learn more about Storysharing™
References
Work with a group of adults with profound and multiple disabilities and children in special schools (Grove, 2007) showed that very little “storying” of personal experience was going on. Staff and families, when asked for stories about events in the lives of pupils or service users, would state likes and dislikes, or would give very brief information about routine events, or special outings.
He likes to hear music. That's his story
She went on holiday and liked playing in the sand
She used to have a chair that she rocked in.
What they seemed to find very difficult was to create and share stories about real experiences in a way that helped the child to remember and enjoy and tell it. However, if you sat and listened in the staff room, you could hear these same staff telling endless anecdotes in a very lively way.
Why not?
There are many possible reasons for this difficulty. The main ones seem to be:
• The children and adults do not initiate the information themselves in a
way that people can understand. It may therefore be assumed that they
remember nothing, or are not interested.
• There are no interesting experiences to talk about. This is
particularly true for adults with pmld's, whose quality of life is often
frankly shockingly limited and reductive. No more holidays and trips out for
them. Their lives tend to be dominated by routine.
• People do not know how to engage children and adults with severe
communication difficulties in the act of storytelling. A small research
project undertaken by Louise McHutchison from City University in 2005-6
found that conversations between staff and adults who were nonverbal were
dominated by requests and social chat. No narratives.
Storysharing ™aims to develop practical skills for staff and families in:
• finding the “sparkle” in every day life that can be made into a story
• strategies for helping children and adults with severe communication
difficulties to notice and remember these experiences
• techniques for shared telling.