Life Story Notebooks Being Used at Idaho State Child Protection Services

by Michael Boyter
(Wasilla, Alaska)

From Michael Boyter, site owner of FamilyHistoryProducts.com:
May 19th 2010


Hello everyone,

I wanted to share an email, with you, that I received earlier this week. It is from a, very inspired I think, lady by the name of Karen Krebs.

Karen works for the Idaho State Child Protection Service. She is using my ebook Memorygrabber Life Story Workbook in a way that I had never imaged it could be used.

Here is her email.....


"Hi Michael,

Thank you so much for Memorygrabber.

I am a local supervisor for Idaho State Child Protection Services - and one of the things I'm trying to facilitate is creation of "family life story notebooks" for our biological families - pages that the parents and children can complete while they're having parent/child visits at our office and can continue to build on once the children are returned home - or given to the adoptive families if the children are not able to return home.

My hope is that we can capture some of that family history and use that as a motivational tool to parents to stay engaged with their children while in foster care.

I have a couple of foster mothers and some staff helping on this project - and they're really excited as they see the benefit in the notebooks as well. We're hoping to get a grant to fund the project as our funding is pretty much down the toilet...

So, I'll be using some of your material but may need to tone it down to meet the children's level - and/or use it to gather information related to the parents that the children will be able to treasure in the future.

Your questions are so thorough that I don't have to pry too much out of my brain! I will cite your pages and/or books in this project, along with other resources I've found.

Thank you again for the time and energy you've put into this process. I will use (Memorygrabber) knowing that you've put your heart and soul into this - and I'll be carrying on with the same heart and soul. Thank you again... Karen"

-----------

I think Karen's idea is a tremendous one. In all of these years I never thought about using life story work in this way. Colleges, schools and individuals in the Veteran's Adminstration (VA) in Wisconsin are using Memorygrabber, but this is a new idea.

I thank you Karen for your email.

Michael Boyter
FamilyHistoryProducts.com