Mums and dads who are facing a terminal illness and a life-shortening diagnosis and have underage children can apply to take part in the audiobook project. However, this does not mean that your illness is already very advanced or that a massive deterioration is to be expected immediately. Please feel free to contact us even if you feel that you are still very stable. With your very personal life-hearing story, you are giving your children a precious gift for the future.

If you are interested in recording an audio book, please send your request directly by email to kontakt@familienhoerbuch.de.

We will send you a form which you should complete and return to us as soon as possible. As soon as we are in contact with each other, we will start planning your family audio book.

The family audiobooks are free of charge for families who are confronted with a life-shortening diagnosis.

Nobody has to bring their own money for ‘their family audiobook’, because relatives or friends of previous participants have already collected donations for this purpose and made them available to Familienhörbuch gGmbH for its work. However, in order to secure future productions and offer other affected persons the opportunity to record a free audiobook, we ask all participants and their families, relatives and friends to also collect donations.

You have no experience with donations or benefit campaigns? No problem! We will take you by the hand and stand by your side. Get in touch with our fundraising team.

Your contact person is Carmen Dreyer: carmen.dreyer@familienhoerbuch.de.

Whether three full days or six half days – whether ONLINE or in a face-to-face meeting – we will advise you and work with you to find the right place and time.

We can plan a time for the interviews that is appropriate to your circumstances and record the audio recordings in the recording studio, but also in hospital, in a hospice or at home if your strength no longer allows for interviews lasting several hours. And if it’s too busy at home and you have no peace and quiet, we’ll find a solution for that too.

Our audio biographers are professional journalists who have been trained at the Academy for Palliative Medicine in Bonn under the direction of Prof Radbruch, Director of the Bonn Palliative Clinic, and Judith Grümmer. In the meantime, a Germany-wide network of audio biographers has been established, which enables a high degree of flexibility in terms of time and location.

Our sound designers, who then prepare the dramaturgy for your recordings and add music, are also continuously trained and are aware of the great responsibility of their task.

Psychological crisis intervention is available to participants accepted into the project for the duration of the project. This ensures that you have a professional contact person at your side during the project work who can competently answer your questions and concerns about audio biography and communication in the family.

The scientific monitoring of the family audiobook project serves on the one hand to ensure quality and develop guidelines for audiobiographical work with people who have received a life-shortening diagnosis. On the other hand, studies are being prepared to scientifically clarify whether the family audiobook can support children orphaned at an early age in processing their experiences of illness and loss.

The aim is for therapy-accompanying audio biography work to be supported by health insurance companies in future as a preventative measure against post-traumatic stress disorder and to be established in the German healthcare system.