Stories
Over very many years, Creative Inspirations has built many relationships where trust has been built through what may have previously seemed impossible circumstances.
Roy was in secondary school and he just could not concentrate. When he was amongst his classmates he was more like a kangaroo leaping all over the place and also in the street when with his mates Beyond his own control it seemed. His teacher asked me if there was anything he could do on a one-to-one. The local museums service in Woodstock, Oxfordshire welcomed Roy to work alongside their model maker, Tim, who was also a foster carer. Roy spent time with Tim over six months and then he went to his teacher and asked if he could go back into school full time, he was really ready just to mix in and get on with everyone.
Ben was 16. He was acting out his rage at home, in school and on the street – there was nothing on offer for him. A social worker asked me to visit him at his home and chat to him with his parents present. I asked him what interest he would love to take up more than anything else. He said immediately that his dad had been a blacksmith in the army and he wanted to be a blacksmith.
I left the family and went home and looked up blacksmiths through the Yellow Pages (now readily available on the Internet). I rang each one, until one said he would definitely take Ben each Saturday for the whole day. I simply gave the name and telephone number of the blacksmith to Ben’s social worker who organised for Ben to go. His enthusiasm was boundless and cycling out on a Saturday morning from his town to the village where the blacksmith lived was nothing to him. He was fired up.
At school, teachers – instead of having to bellow at him in the corridor – stopped to ask him how he was getting on with the blacksmith’s work. Ben’s behaviours changed and he had very quickly gained a positive identity. His parents, teachers and social worker and the local magistrates court all felt supported by Ben’s interest that had become a fulcrum around which his own very personal life and world evolved. If only he and his family had received that sound, constructive support when Ben was small, not only his world but that of his whole family would have changed positively and so many problems prevented.
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