Child's Voice

Ruairi has a talent for expression. He is able to tell us about the enormous impact of living in an emotionally abusive and neglectful home. Ruairi's poetry is full of difficult emotions and it is not an easy read. Hearing a child's so directly may be uncomfortable because then we have to recognise that our child care and mental health systems support the child well enough. Ruairi was adopted at four and a half and this book shows just how much children take in before that age. Sadly, Ruairi's family life experiences are common ones for children who are adopted: domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, poor physical care, poverty, changes of carer and frequent moves of house/hostel. The instability and abusive nature of these experiences take their toll on a child and the effects are not short term. Children and young people are rarely able to explain the impact on them and their relationships. Ruairi can do this and he hopes that his work will help those who are not able to speak for themselves, particularly adolescents. In this collection of poetry based on his life story book and written in adolescence, he captures emotions he had about his experiences in early life. They also show the effect on his feelings about himself and his family. It is rare to find such a coherent account of the way a child or teenager has been affected by their early experiences. This important work will help adopters and foster carers to appreciate the potential for long term and far-reaching effects from children's early experiences. It will remind social workers, psychologists, teachers, counsellors and therapists to appreciate the way very early experiences may lead to difficulties within closer relationships and to note how those issues began. This is an updated version of Life Story Collection with the addition of some other poems and commentary. Life Story Collection had five star Amazon reviews.