We all carry with us a unique history: our memories make us who we are. Life story work keeps those memories alive and provides a greater understanding of the person. Putting together a life story gives the opportunity to share memories, whether happy or sad.
Working with a relative to compile a book about their life can be a rewarding and illuminating experience, and can also provide something that can be used by carers to discover more about a person.
The easiest way to produce a book if you are not familiar with computers is to buy a high quality large format scrapbook, or even use an A4 loose leaf folder with heavy duty pages. You can use copies of family photographs, old or modern photographs (e.g. from magazines or postcards) of places that may have relevance to the person, photographs from magazines of things that the person has a special interest in (e.g. boats, flowers, animals, woodworking tools, cars, food, relevant fashions, favourite popstars, etc etc). Add a small amount of clear explanatory text in large print.
If you are competent using computer based images and the internet another option for life story books is to create them using services available on the web.
One company that provides a service compiling a type of life story book is Caring Memories a privately owned company based in Edinburgh. These books look very similar to old family albums and cost around £40. See www.caringmemories.net
If you are looking for something with a more up to date and flexible design style you can use a website such as http://www.blurb.com/ This company (like others around) allows you to put together a large format and high quality book of images and text for less than £40. The main benefit of this option is that it allows complete freedom to design a book to individual tastes.
With the internet based systems there is the important added benefit that additional copies can be purchased to ensure that there is no risk of losing the original.