Case Study | Dealing With Anxiety and Low Self-Esteem

Our targeted support team recently offered their support to a young person who had been struggling with high feelings of anxiety and long-term low confidence and self-esteem, brought on by significant bullying at a younger age.

This bullying had led to the young person refusing to attend school and massively impacted their abilities to socialise and to feel positive. Alongside this, ongoing issues at home had exacerbated the issues and they were finding it increasingly difficult to understand their feelings, be social, and engage with other professional services.

It was agreed between our support worker and the young person that they should strive to increase the young person’s social skills to far improve their feelings of anxiety when faced with social situations. This would improve both their confidence, as well as their attendance to college. The young person would also be able to receive support around basic life skills that would help them throughout adulthood.

Our targeted support worker provided support through 16 sessions in a 1:1 environment, covering topics such as:

• Feelings/emotions
• Healthy/unhealthy relationships
• Coping strategies for feelings of anxiousness
• Goal setting for the future
• Learning to cook
• Budgeting
• Fact vs. Opinion
• Routine
• Exploring volunteer opportunities – attending local care home for enquiries
• Support with completing job applications
• Learning how to tell the time

Comparable to entry scores, the young person’s self-assessment on completion of the targeted support showed a significant increase in self-esteem, willingness to attend college regularly, and positively thinking about the future.

Following our support, the young person has continued to get in contact with our support worker. They’ve told us that she has made a number of new, healthy friendships and also acquired a provisional driver’s license to allow them to apply for a DBS certificate and to pursue a career as a carer for the elderly.

Of the support, the young person said: “Positive Futures has helped me to be more confident, to be more knowledgeable with my finances, and to meet new people.”

We are so proud to be able to share stories like this one and to have the opportunities to make such a vast impact in the lives of the young people in our community.

To enquire about making a referral, or for any additional information on the services we can provide for your child, please email info@positivefutres.org.uk

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