Building resilience and overcoming challenges

Tom’s experience with education wasn’t a positive one, having been removed from college and a previous King’s Trust Team programme. At home, Tom was isolated and struggled with building positive relationships. Joining the Team programme was Tom’s last opportunity to restart education and begin the search for employment.

At the beginning of the programme, Tom didn’t believe that he could complete the programme, and this showed in his attendance, behaviour and interactions with the rest of the young people. Following Team Building week and residential, boundaries and communication styles were learnt, and positive relationships began to form. Tom had low self-esteem, so encouragement from the team leaders and team members throughout the programme really helped.

The skills learnt from the first weeks of Team showed an increase in Tom’s attendance and independence, informing team leaders of lateness due to travel, and outlining when he needed support with coursework. This lead to Tom completing the course and being a successful applicant in a security role.

Tom’s words:
“I didn’t want to do water-based activities during residential, but strong encouragement from team leaders and members of the team made me feel more confident. I then was able to take part in all of week 13’s enrichment water-based activities (such as aqua park and paddle boarding) which shows that I can do it and have learnt to swim better.”

“The course has helped me develop my communication, team working skills and resilience. I have learnt to walk away from challenging situations to keep myself and others safe. My takeaway from the course is that not everyone is as bad as I think they are when I first met them and allowing time to get to know someone is really important.”