Josh's journey from angry to thriving
Before Josh started engaging with Saints Foundation, he wasn’t in school and his anger was affecting his life at home, but with support from Saints Foundation he has turned his life around.
Before Josh started engaging with Saints Foundation, he wasn’t in school and his anger was affecting his life at home, but with support from Saints Foundation he has turned his life around.
Josh said: “Before Saints Foundation I was in a tough spot, I was quite angry and moody. A lot of that pins on school, stuff going on at home, like I was quite mean and probably not the nicest person to live with.”
It was through our Advantage Talking Tactics Programme that Josh met Jack, one of our Health and Wellbeing Project Officers at Saints Foundation, who provide 1-1 support for young people struggling with their mental wellbeing.
Josh spoke of his first impression of the programme: “The first couple of weeks was just Jack taking the time to get to know me. We had very common interests. He really built trust with me in those initial few weeks and that is really important for me.”
The early shift didn’t go unnoticed, with Josh’s Nan April commenting on what she saw: “When it was school he would come home, you would ask him what he did and it was always, ‘nothing’. When he came home from seeing Jack, he would talk to us about what he did and how he enjoyed it.
“He would always tell us we didn’t know how he felt, and he was right, so him having Jack to explain it to helped us to better understand him too. He enjoyed seeing Jack.”
Josh added: “It really was just the talking for me that helped. I wasn’t going to school, so I didn’t really have anyone to speak to other than Nan, and sometimes I needed to speak to someone who wasn’t Nan or Grandad. Jack was that person I could naturally talk with.”
The mentoring offered sessions are about more than just support and giving young people the tools to manage their own wellbeing, but also working with them to figure out their personal goals.
With Josh out of school, this part was particularly important for Jack, as he explained: “Part of having that conversation around school was getting to the bottom of what he wanted to do in the future. Even if you don’t like school it is important to get out, meet new people, and committing to learning something even if it isn’t traditional.”
“Straight away Josh was so sure that he wanted to be a train driver, and through our relationship with South Western Railway, I was able to bring him down to meet a couple of people at Southampton Central. It was a good experience but also allowed us to explore how he could make that career path happen.”
South Western Railway and the team at Southampton Central have been long term supporters of the Foundation across a number of our projects, and having Josh down to see what his future could look like was another way they have shown their commitment to the community.
Josh: “The day was amazing. It really gave a clear insight into, this is what I would like, but can I get to this and how do I do that.”
Just over a year since he first met Jack, Josh is now back in education with college, and thriving: “I am currently in college and flying. It is nothing like school, I am going, I’m doing it, and smashing it as well.”
This has massively improved his situation at home too, as April confirmed: “Josh is certainly in a much better place than he was before. He was an angry young man, one little thing he would fly off the handle like a firework. He is such a good place now, Saints Foundation has done him a power of good.”
