WhyTry? Supporting Young People

Why Try to have a CALM life?

Tanya is a 15-year-old girl diagnosed with ADHD.  When she first came to CAAS with her parents the whole family were struggling. Tanya had no friends and was spending break times at school on her own. She didn't socialise at weekends and was angry, often taking it out on her siblings.  Her parents accessed our 10-week Living with ADHD & Autism course which provided them with a clear understanding of ADHD and parenting strategies.  Tanya attend a 6-week course called “CALMS” Coping and Learning Management Strategies which explores ADHD, enabling young people to see it as a positive as well as providing tools to cope and manage. She also attended an anger management course.  During both Tanya made friends and Tanya was then empowered to give a presentation on ADHD to her class, indicating acceptance and understanding of her diagnosis and home life is now better for everyone.

Tanya is just one of over 100 young people accessing our centre seeking support each year.   With your support, not only can we continue to provide WhyTry? (10-week CBT based resilience building course) and CALMS but also individual support to the young people currently coming to the Centre, to enable others to find their place in the world and have their voice heard.

From this:                                                                                                             To this:

WhyTry? in action to promote problem solving and teamwork:

The need?
Young people with a diagnosis of ADHD or autism are vulnerable to bullying (34% of autistic children say they've been picked on at school), peer pressure, social exclusion, severe anxiety, other mental health problems, permanent exclusion from education (40% have been excluded informally and 20% formally).   All these factors affect their day to day lives and can prevent them from fulfilling their potential as adults.

The Person:
The success of a Charity is based not only on its services but its people.  Like many other organisations, CAAS struggles to get core costs, particularly for covering key salaries.  Our Director of ADHD is one of the founding members and is instrumental in the organisation.  Like most of our clients, she started the charity with a small group of parents because there was nothing there to support her child when he received a diagnosis of ADHD age 6.  Outside of managerial responsibilities, she is one of the key personnel involved in running our groups for parents and young people. She delivers our WhyTry? and CALMS courses for young people, as well as running our Young Persons Film Club.  She is currently completing WhyTry train the trainer which will enable her to skill up the rest of the CAAS team allowing us to provide even more support for young people in future.

Currently,  we have a 1 in 15 chance of being successful with a funding application, so donations really do keep organisations like CAAS going and we are proud to be able say that at least 75p in every £1 we receive goes directly to services.   We'd love your support to ensure we can posts that are essential to the success of the organisation, funded.  

Plus, she has more energy than the rest of the team put together and keeps us on our toes by doing things like this: