Callum was running away from home and school when he was referred to U-evolve. Callum had experienced severe childhood deprivation that had serious consequences on his psychological and emotional health. Callum has been developmentally stunted and has been diagnosed with ADHD. He is very resistant to new people and new situations, it takes time to establish trust with him as he has learned to fear abandonment from attachment figures.
Callum was quick to welcome U-evolve’s help, we built trust with him through play, until he was ready to engage in coaching methods designed to help him notice when he was feeling bad and what to do about it.
His teacher said, “he isn’t like this with anyone”, as we started having positive results with Callum quite quickly. Callum trusted us enough to tell us that he was running away as he feared transitioning from P7 to high school. We worked on building a positive future image of high school where he would be in control and knew what to do in moments of stress. We worked to make Callum feel safe within himself by boosting his self-confidence using resilience trees, anchoring and visual techniques. We also helped him with deep breathing strategies and to look for help from others when things weren’t going so well. Callum stopped running away from school and his performance in school completely changed. U-evolve were able to be patient and flexible with Callum, until he trusted us to help him.
