Purpose:
The Welcome Book, also known as an Introductions book. It's a book that provided in advance of the first meeting and is intended to help a child/children transition to a new home. .
Formats:
The welcome book will obviously need to be tailored to the child/ren and their ages.
There are some online shops which offer welcome books, but I found that the waits didn't really fit in with the timescales I was looking for.
I actually made two in the end. One as a printed board photobook and, because the delivery times changed from the original, another using a self-adhesive photobook and adding photos and captions to it. As my little one was turning three around the same time and was still occasionally prone to chewing on things she shouldn't or not caring for her paper books properly, a board book seemed a safer option.
This decision came after a chat with the foster carers and a social worker, where i was able to ask about anything to take into account.
Transition toy:
I asked about favourite animals/interests and also if they knew of any fears or bad experiences with animals/toys, before i settled on the right toy to use with my little one. As you can probably guess from my little picture above, in our case, we had monkey.
What I included:
I originally outlined a lot and included some interests and some close friends that they would have in their life, but after some discussion with my social worker, we cut these all out and kept it simple.
"Monkey visits [Little One]'s new home"
I included monkey in each picture as i introduced her new mummy, our car, the outside of our house and each room of the house & garden. I finished it with a photo of me reading a bedtime story to the monkey in bed and a photo of me and monkey with the caption "Mummy and monkey look forward to seeing you soon!".
Who/ how / when to hand across:
In my case, this was discussed in a transition planning meeting. The book is typically introduced to the little one(s) by the social worker, though it can - and in this case, was - the foster carer, if they have a more appropriate relationship to discuss it.How it went?
In our case, little one loved it. She took it to show her mummy to each member of her foster family, she took it to her nursery to introduce them to her new mummy and show them her new house. I was sent a little video of her second reading of it, which came through when I was with my parents and I can't say there was a dry eye in the house.Other useful links:
*Note that this is different to an adoption story book, which is more akin to the life story book, which i'll come back to later.
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