"We have been incredibly fortunate to have James involved in rescuing our son’s permanent exclusion from school. We had not met James prior to his engagement – and the following is a summary of the experience:

 

James gained our trust instantly and felt like part of the family the moment he walked in – making his regular presence in our house a pleasure and never intrusive, out of sync with our busy living / working space, or tricky in any way. Watching James spend time with our son from a personal development, life coach, teacher perspective but wrapped in a ‘friend’ approach was amazing – our son growing in confidence and appearing more and more willing to learn and return to education with each passing week.

 

James’ approach to our son was to initially just talk to him and get to know his personal areas of interest – eager to simply listen. James has rich life experience and is able to share a story (with humour) on pretty much any subject. With trust developing through conversations and time, James built on our son’s interests with focussed trips – again, building confidence and trust.

 

With growing trust and familiarity, and from a relaxed perspective, James then started to “unpick” the reasons behind our son’s exclusion – and using his headmasters experience – being able to discuss events from the perspective of life choices and lessons for the future – but never with any sense of judgement or in a way that was confrontational. Our son enjoyed talking to James – with laughter often being heard from the room they held sessions in.

 

Whilst carrying out the unpicking of choices and building of confidence and trust, James was also laying the ground work for returning to education (in whatever form that would take) by getting our son to do little bits of learning – initially on things that interested him but then slowly bringing the curriculum into play – but always at the right speed and always in a way that kept our son enthused – the work being carried out for a friend rather than “for a tutor” or “for school.”

 

James slowly ramped up the education side but making it worthwhile with rewards – often taking our son out for things he liked doing for completing good work or taking a session seriously with focussed attention.  At all times, James would be in touch to reassure and always feeding back to us as parents on observations or things we needed to be aware of.

 

In readying our son for his return to education, James was fully focussed on details and practicalities – prepared to do whatever was necessary to help in any way – always offering reassurance and support and often using personal contacts to “smooth the way.” James goes out of his way to make sure all aspects are covered – thinking through all the elements that concern young adults and their own particular traits and requirements that parents may not have considered.

 

James genuinely cares about helping young adults / children through their educational and life difficulties – we are so very grateful of all his help over the last few months. Our son is happy and thriving in his new school – the life lessons taught by James making him appear a totally different person and student – eager to learn and be taught at school but also eager to be more helpful at home. 

 

When considering the serious nature of our son’s exclusion, we genuinely feared our son was destined to never return to a normal school or entertain the standard curriculum / exams. With James’ help and dedication, our son is thriving at his new school, with teachers openly expressing surprise as to his previous exclusion reason and behaviours. Conversations with our son are now about how much he enjoys school, moving up sets and positive teacher feedback – which a few months ago, prior to James, would have seemed laughable.

 

If you have a young adult or child in a similar situation, can I please suggest that you let James work his magic – you will not be disappointed. As parents, seeing the outcomes of his services, we would not hesitate in recommending."