CASE STUDY | Young person develops positivity and confidence due to Targeted Support Service

A 12-year old young person from North Liverpool has greatly benefitted from the Targeted Support Services of Positive Futures, after struggling with her confidence and self-esteem.

The young person, who will be referred to as Beth, received 16 one-to-one targeted support sessions from the Liverpool based Youth Development Charity. During these sessions, Beth worked with her Targeted Support Worker, Emma, to work through her various feelings and emotions.

The intervention

At the start of the intervention, the young person set themselves a goal to build their confidence up. In her first session, Beth graded her confidence as one out of 10. To help address and improve this, Emma utilised a range of activities to support Beth. These included:

• Creating a DIY clock with her to remind her to do positive things with her time
• Identifying feelings like the weather, and using this to help express herself
• Writing positive thinking statements and positive affirmations, and using these on a daily basis at home
• Writing a positive letter to herself, whereby she listed all of her good qualities
• Creating a mood diary and journal, to capture feelings, mood and the good things that are going on
• Exploring what a good friendship looks like and the qualities that a good friend should have
• Exploring feelings of butterflies and using her own butterfly drawing to explore the feelings we get when we are feeling anxious, nervous or excited
• Creating a sand jar with layers of different colours, each representing a different feeling.

The outcome

By the end of the 16 sessions, Beth not only seemed more confident in herself, but she also graded her confidence at 10 out of 10, using the same scale that she was asked to complete at the start.

The impact

The targeted intervention allowed the young person to explore their feelings and emotions, and address these in a safe and supportive way.

The impact of this was that Beth felt more confident and comfortable talking about her feelings, be them positive or negative, and she was able to recognise how her feelings and thoughts impacted on her self-esteem, confidence and overall outlook.