My Life Story

My Life Story
by Bridget Betts and Afshan Ahmad:
Previously £195.00 + VAT: now £69.95 incl VAT

Life Story work with looked after children is more and more clearly recognised as a key part of helping young people come to terms with life events and feelings. My Life Story is the unique award winning interactive resources for engaging, enjoyable and accessible life story work.

Designed from the start as a child friendly CDROM, My Life Story features sound, colour, animation, voice, music, fascinating or amusing multimedia activities and (of course) a well researched and professional focus on children's needs. Developed by two highly experienced child care professionals over two years with support from a highly innovative children's services company, My Life Story truly breaks new ground in resources for direct work.

My Life Story was shortlisted in the Pavilion Awards in 2003, runner up in the HUSITA awards in 2004 and has sold over 1000 copies throughout the UK.

My Life Story sees children's information and feelings as akin to buried treasure - immensely valuable but requiring worker and child together to dig until they can find it. Hence the main menu comes in the form of a desert island with tropical and pirate objects. Click on the objects for animations or to access the various functions and sections of the programme.

Clicking on any of the main input section icons takes users to a tabbed "filofax" type page appearing out of the treasure chest and filling with the menu of input pages and activities for that section.

Main sections of My Life Story are:

Facts and Figures
Past and Present
People and Places
Likes and Dislikes
Hopes and Fears
Wishes and Dreams &
Contacts (an interactive address book)

Altogether, My Life Story has over 750 input items, over 40 interactive activities, over 30 printable worksheets and almost 60 pages of professional user training material, including an extensive resouces guide. Age range 8-16. PC & Mac

We are very impressed by the simplicity, adaptability and accessibility of this resource. It does not require any degree of computer literacy and can be used by both the professional and the child they are working with to cover all the main points of Life Story work.
L Louise Paterson: Deputy Project Manager, NCH Wellingborough Family Centre

Having watched my two children using this resource, I can thoroughly recommend it. Anything computer-based is of immediate interest but the excellent combination of music, sound effects, animation and graphics makes it a very attractive programme. In fact, whenever started it was hard to persuade either of them to close it down!
Adoption UK Aug 2003

My 15-year-old foster son finds reading and writing a challenge but, like most teenagers, enjoys working on the computer. He says: 'I think about it as an island of my life with lots of adventures. I think it's good to travel around each category. It will take a long time to complete all the parts and do the worksheets. You can print out the sheets and keep them and see how things change as you're growing up. It's a lot better than writing in a book and if I put it on a disc it will be easy to keep safe. It was quite easy to read so I can do some of it on my own. I think this CD-ROM would help children a lot.
Jacqueline Wright, foster carer and trainer