LEWIS

Lewis was referred for our weekly 1:1 pastoral mentoring support following the death of his dad, mum, grandfather and dog between March 2020 and July 2020. We began to support him as he began year 11 in September 2020: his GCSE year. Understandably, despite being allowed to attend school in person throughout the national lockdown, he had struggled to get to school due to being “incredibly tired;” ‘flat’ in his mood and preferring to stay in bed. From the third weekly session in school with our mentor he began to attend more regularly so that he was attending fulltime again by mid-October 2020.

Between June 2020 and March 2021 he changed address four times as different family members looked after him. One of the things he said to our mentor was that it was really good to be able to see and talk to the same person when everything else kept changing. The mentoring sessions gave him the space to express his thoughts and emotions of grief and about having very little motivation to engage with his GCSE subjects.

The mentoring sessions provided activities to discuss the deceased individuals and inform him about grief and the ‘normality’ of what he was emotionally, cognitively and physically experiencing. As his grief experience was ‘witnessed’ (shared and validated) in this way, slowly his ability to see the future emerged and his ability to engage with school lessons increased.

Lewis’s mentor then supported him to make revision plans to do what he could to learn, and provided lots of encouragement and praise for him doing this and showing remarkable resilience under the pressure of such difficult circumstances. He completed all of his GCSE assessments and choose to return to school after after his year group had left school because he wanted to continue his Shine Youth mentoring sessions. His uncle and two of his aunts thanked Shine Youth for the support and the difference they have seen it make to Lewis.

*Names have been changed and models have been used to protect the identity of young people.