From there to here addresses the complex issues of adoption and fostering. Resources have been designed for parents to understand how to support their adopted children in discovering and understanding their past. The work is a two part resource kit, one is an aid for parents and the other is a life story book to be filled out by the child. Through these tools young adopted children will gain an understanding of their past and adoption story.
These tools understand that all foster children and adoptive children have different backgrounds and stories and realises that there is not one set template that you can provide that will fit each and everyone's needs. With extensive research into language and structures surrounding this theme, The templates are open for interpretation allowing the child to focus on facilitating positive relationships than focusing on the blank spaces they may have in their family history.
I developed an iconography aesthetic that is approachable, friendly and playful. Keeping each icon as minimal as possible, rounded single lines were used to create each form. Playing on a dot to dot aesthetic, with broken up lines, helped to expose the reasoning behind life books, and how joining each little dots helps to visualise the big picture. Opacity and transparency have helped to achieve this aesthetic by the line colour depicting from light to dark. A child like feel has been promoted through the soft toned colour palette.
The Parents Resource
The parents resource simplifies the steps to creating a life book. The layout of the resource follows a structure that promotes the positives of the child’s life and doesn’t dwell on the negatives. After a simple introduction, the resource then leads the parents through a step by step process, with the life book template aligned. Designing the book’s structure so that the child’s present is first, following their past and returning back to their present, enables children to focus on facilitating positive relationships and lets them concentrate on who they are now. This also helps the child to feel safe and secure in their home environment and understand whom they can trust.
The tone of voice of this book is portrayed in a more conversational context rather than instructional allowing parents to feel more comfortable and at ease while helping the child to understand such a heavy topic.
Due to children from the age of 2-6, learning from sensory experiences, I have placed stickers throughout the resource to help engage the child in their learning about their life journey. This creates a more memorable, fun and active experience.
Stickers for the alphabet, numbers, bits of clothing and family members have been added to make the experience a bit more creative than just the generic writing and drawing the answers. After recognising from my research that not all children have all information or photographs from their past or of family members, Children can use the family member stickers as a replacement. This can then remove the burden of seeing blank spaces within their history and replace it by portraying all of the important people.
Life Story Book Template
The blank life story book has been ordered to follow the steps in the parent's resource, allowing the child and parent to work together in collating the child’s present, past and future. The book has been kept a clean white to allow the child to personalise, reflecting themselves and to make their own. The life book also is designed to help them understand who they are and reflect on the people who are there for them.
The front cover can also be personalised by drawing a self portrait of themselves. Examples of front covers have been depicted in the resource and have used the clothing stickers at the beginning of the resource to make their self portrait that little more extra special.
The language has been modified so that it does not focus on stereotypical family structures or particular types of adoption and is open for interpretation by any family or any child’s story.
The life book has also been designed in an a4 format allowing the child to easily add or remove pages to their special book. The life book is never finished, just as a child keeps on growing and their journey continues.
