This particular young person had not attended school for over 18 months. He had SEN, social, emotional and health and ASD.
He had anxiety around leaving the house, he very rarely went out and was socially isolated. His school and parents believed he would benefit from intervention, support and mentoring from an outside agency in an effort to engage with him in terms of improving confidence/self-esteem and hopefully build up a trusting relationship whereby he can open up about his emotions.
Positive Futures provided 1-1 support so that he could safely express his feelings and emotions without judgement or fear of unpredictable responses. We helped him build confidence/self-esteem and relationships to help him become more socially active and less anxious about leaving the family home.
He attended one to one support/mentoring sessions at Positive Futures. He was encouraged to attend some group activities when possible after working on building his confidence and self-esteem.
The young person disclosed he was anxious about his appearance and wanted to lose weight gained during lockdown as he felt this would boost his confidence and feel more comfortable being out in public and eventually returning to school/education.
We completed sessions on confidence/self-esteem, relieving pressure/stress and reducing anxiety. We also completed sessions on Healthy Lifestyles and discussed/planned exercise routines.
As time progressed, we began to go on regular walks together during our sessions and/or delivered healthy cooking sessions so he could learn to prepare his own meals at home.
Transition sessions were also delivered in school with the young person to ease his anxiety.
Due to the work delivered, the young person had a more structured routine before returning to school and was walking/exercising more frequently. This helped him with the trouble he had sleeping and encouraged him to start getting out of bed earlier and making the most of his day.
He has lost weight (close to 2 stone) and his confidence increased to the point where he felt comfortable returning to school for Positive Futures sessions and staying for an hour afterwards if his Positive Futures support worker was there with him. This evolved into the young person attending school for morning periods only in their inclusion unit.
We still complete regular weekly sessions and discuss feelings/emotions as well as keeping up with his healthy lifestyle.
He is still attending the inclusion unit in school but is now staying in until lunchtime and entering certain lessons he feels comfortable with.
This is to continue for the rest of the academic year and the young person has picked his GCSE options with a plan for him to return to full time education in September. He will hopefully still have access to the inclusion unit at school if he needs time out of class in a quiet environment.
The young person is now enjoying going into school again as he feels like he is making the most of his day. He also feels more confident and less anxious when leaving the family home. He is able to identify when he needs to take time out to gather his thoughts in order focus at a later time.
He is also eating more healthily and keeping up with an exercise routine.
He has gone form not attending school at all for over 18 months to attending every morning he has been supposed to for the last half term.
