A young man referred to as CC initially engaged with Positive Futures via their open access weekly football session in the Tuebrook area. However before long, he self-referred himself to the targeted one-to-one sessions that the charity offers.
The charity used the Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS) to identify key issues that the young person was experiencing in order to develop a tailored targeted support programme to help him. This showed the young person to have very high emotional problems and high peer problems. The team soon learnt that in addition to depression, anxiety and lack of confidence, the young person was also struggling with his issues related to his neuro-diversity as well as having a suffered a recent bereavement. These issues were also impacting the young person in school.
Positive Futures used the targeted one-to-one sessions to teach a range of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) techniques to help him reduce the impact his mental health was having on his life. However the team felt that one-to-one sessions could only help CC so much and he would also benefit from group work.
During the sessions CC presented many different problems and while the RCADS highlighted how he was below clinical threshold, the team were concerned about the type of emotional and cognitive problems he was experiencing. Because of this, they also developed a relationship with his mum to help support in these areas. They also worked closely with his Mentor in school to provide a holistic support packages. By doing this, the Positive Futures team felt that their intervention would be most effective for CC.
During the course of the sessions, he opened up to his Youth Support Worker and they worked through many different topics
including bereavement, disassociation’s which were distressing him, his physical limitation due to being overweight, and bullying. The team wanted to provide CC with more positive experiences in his life and worked on confidence with him until he felt comfortable accessing some of the other activities within the charity.
Five months on and CC’s disassociation’s have stopped and he is no longer bullied. He is being supported by his family to lose weight and increase his level of fitness. He continues to access PF groups including the volunteers’ group and open access activities. He has also reported that his social confidence has increased. He has also now ceased his one-to-one support commenting that he no longer feels the he needs this level of support.
In 18-19 Positive Futures have supported 83 young people over 588 one-to-one support sessions. In total, the young charity has delivered 610 hours of support through this intervention. View our Annual Report for a full breakdown of our impact.
