Books, booklets & multimedia

Nutmeg Gets a Little Help

This story focuses on adoption support and life story work, and how these can aid adopted children.

	Price: £12.00 Book 28 pages guidelines 14 pages A4	BAAF, December 2004 ISBN 978-1-903699-58-4

Now Nutmeg is settled with his adoptive family, powerful feelings have resurfaced about his past, which confuse and worry him.

Why couldn't his birth mother look after him?

Will he grow up to be cross like his birth father?

How can he make sure he doesn't forget about them?

Nutmeg gets a little help from Beth Badger, his social worker. Over several visits, she uses various strategies - including a candle game and the drawing of family trees - to help Nutmeg understand and accept his feelings about his birth parents and his past. His adoptive parents help him to understand his place in his two families.

As in the earlier stories (Nutmeg Gets Adopted, Nutmeg Gets Cross and Nutmeg Gets a Letter), this new title offers adoptive parents and social workers a practical way to help adopted children identify and explore the strong feelings likely to be aroused by their past experiences.

This book will help parents explain to their young adopted child why their birth parents could not look after them, and shows how good memories from their child's earlier life can be captured and retained while resolving the bad. The author explores the helpful role of life story work and how this can help a child to come to terms with confusing feelings, acknowledge and make sense of the past, and build a sense of self-worth.

Practice guidelines will help to get the most out of the story and to deal with the complex emotional issues surrounding adoption support and life story work.