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Our new Life Books preserve memories for kids in care
Our Life Books team members have completely revamped how they make Life Books for kids, and the results are beautiful.
The books are presented to kids when they leave foster care or when they're adopted. They provide an important collection of photos and information designed to help kids understand things about their time in care and about their biological family.
The books used to be made of pages clipped into clunky binders. But now, Lauren Young and her Life Books team are making sleek, glossy magazines.
Young made revamping the books a priority when she was promoted to supervisor in January 2015. The books sometimes are the only connection a child has to his or her birth family, she said, so they need to be right and they need to be the best we can offer.
Making a good book isn't easy. Finding information about biological families can be challenging and it's often difficult to find a lot of good photos. But our Life Books writers look through archives and work with social workers to collect information and pictures. Our social workers are thrilled with the new books.
Young hopes to work more with foster parents, particularly to get photographs of the kids while they're in care. She does presentations to foster parenting classes about the importance of documentation.
The books are so meaningful - not only to the children, but to adoptive families as well. One of the most emotional moments of last year's National Adoption Day ceremony was when a new adoptive mom first saw her new son's Life Book. She had never before seen baby pictures of him. She cried as she looked through the photos of what her new son looked like before she knew him.
The books bring about similar reactions in our print shop, which Young credits for helping the books look great. Both Carol Langwald, document manager, and Kelley Sullivan, proofreader and printer, have had tears well up in their eyes while they read the books. They want to make sure, Langwald said, that the books are "a lasting keepsake that's as perfect as humanly possible."
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The Life Book team: Supervisor Lauren Young, writer Douglas Geyer and, seated, writer Jennifer Grote. Writer Claudette Singleton did not want to be photographed.
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