In several blog posts before (see #26, #31,#33, and #36) I reported on the Life Story Project at White and Yellow Cross Care Foundation in Sint Maarten.
The idea is to build a narrative of the life of the clients, so caregivers can improve and tailor their services. Training was given to staff to interview the clients. Originally these life stories were just texts with photos. One of the participants in the training suggested to visualise the stories in a poster that is represented in the client’s room. Since then that is the custom.
Recently Esther Simmons and Mimi Hodge interviewed one of the clients of Sister Basilia Centre. They came up with the brilliant idea to invite her to take part in the production of the poster. She typed the story, choose style and letter font, choose the photos, the color of the background and the layout. In other words, the client was in charge of the process!
This element of the life story development fits so well in the Client Centered Approach that the co-creation will be a standard element of the training, from now. Then, the additional idea of Esther and Mimi to make pictures or a video of the development process of the poster can be put into practice as well.
