Writing and Society Research Centre - Hybrid Seminar Series 2025

Belonging: Story, Identity, and the Right to Know

Rachel Morley and Milissa Deitz

Belonging is a 17-minute documentary that brings together academia, advocacy, and lived experience to explore the experiences of young people in foster care. Co-created using participatory research methods, the film follows the story of Hannah, a 20-year-old Australian woman who grew up in multiple foster homes before arriving at her 'forever' home at age 10. Through her reflections and the insights of those who supported her – including her foster parents and Shannon Kendrick, a practitioner of Therapeutic Life Story Work – the film reveals both the painful absence and transformative potentials of life storytelling practices in out-of-home care.

This presentation will include a screening of the film, followed by a discussion of the issues it raises around identity, belonging, and the urgent need for reform when it comes to life story work practice in Australian foster care. We'll explore the creative and collaborative process behind the film’s development, its grounding in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (particularly Article 8, which affirms every child’s right to identity), and the role of visual storytelling in public advocacy. The session will also examine how Life Story Work (LSW), though supported in policy, remains inconsistently implemented – and why its urgent prioritisation is a matter for reform and justice.

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DR MILISSA DEITZ is a former journalist and novelist who teaches in Communication and Creative Industries. She has published widely across newspapers, magazines, and is the author of five books. Her scholarly interests include wellbeing and technology; grief, identity and family; and voice and the marginalised within digital storytelling. Her latest book Foster Youth in the Mediasphere: Lived Experience and Digital Lives in the Australian Out-Of-Home Care System was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2022. She is currently working on a fiction series about a young girl in foster care.

DR RACHEL MORLEY is an award-winning academic with over two decades of experience teaching across the creative industries, communication, and media. Her work is grounded in a belief that storytelling and creative practice can help build socially responsive, future-focused communities. A certified LEGO Serious Play facilitator and currently undertaking certification in Narrative Practice, Rachel brings imaginative, participatory approaches to scholarship and pedagogy. Her interdisciplinary research explores life-writing, arts and wellbeing, digital media, and memory and identity studies. She has published in journals including Journal of Applied Youth Studies, New Writing, Life Writing, Global Media Journal, Sydney Review of Books and Meanjin, amongst others.

Rachel and Milissa's recent creative work includes Belonging: The Search for Identity in the Australian Foster Care System (2024), a documentary that explores the critical importance of promotion of mental health and wellbeing through Life Story Work to support children and young people in Out-of-Home Care to build strong and coherent identities. You can see more of their collaborative work, connected to this issue, here and here.