A parent reflects on Noise Solution's impact for her son, her and her family.

A couple of weeks ago the Mum of someone we’d worked with dropped off a piano keyboard (because we never have enough) that she’d bought her son who, having now got a job and moved abroad now no longer needed it. She explained how Noise Solution had been the catalyst for this young man to re-engage with her, his family, and his education; a complete transformation from the very negative situation when we first met him. This interview is anonymised and published with permission.?

When I look at all the research around engagement, mental health, trauma informed approaches to working with young people - this hits all the right notes. A young man given the space to be himself and not a medical problem to be solved, to make autonomous choices, to experience success and feelings of competence, to have progress reflected back at him, to feel connected to others. All the things we know help people change how they feel about themselves - which leads to transformational change.

In mum's words..

Noise Solution: Can you tell me a little bit about where John was at before he worked with Noise Solution and what your experiences were with services??

Parent: Yeah, so he had stopped going to school because he suffered from a lot of social anxiety which led to depression. He had been advised to not go back to school for the last 2 weeks of the term by his nurse. And then after that he was so anxious about going that he couldn’t actually go back, he tried a couple of times. Found the high school setting too loud, crazy, you know just too much. So he didn’t go back so we had tried home tutoring. But there’s only one home schooler in the whole of Norfolk, so it was a long way. And he wasn’t… he wasn’t actually quite leaving his room. He had become quite isolated, put on a lot of weight because he wasn’t leaving the room and because of medication. And that’s when we were referred to CAMHs?

Noise Solution: How old was he??

Parent: It started when he was 13 and I think he was 14 or 15 when he was with you.?

Noise Solution: What kind of impact was that having on the rest of the family.?

Parent: Horrendous, I stopped working because I wanted to be there to look after him. He stopped interacting with us a lot. Emotionally, it was very difficult for all of us, I also had counselling to help the stress of looking after him. And his sister had counselling and his little brother was really struggling at nursery, just emotionally because it affects the whole family. It becomes easy to forget to look after ourselves because we’ve got still housework, got cooking and you’ve got to look normal, everyday family stuff and with an unwell child which is very exhausting, emotionally exhausting.

Noise Solution: So how did you hear about Noise solution??

Parent: His psychiatrist suggested it because he wasn’t attending school, he wasn’t leaving the house. So she said that there were some places that she knew were available and could apply for. And he got one.?

Noise Solution: In terms of your experiences with other services and this issue, was it similar or different??

Parent: Noise Solution was a breath of fresh air, it was amazing because it didn’t focus on why the child was ill. What might be the causes, it was just something for John that he could do and he wasn’t being judged, it was just something that he could do outside a family, outside of doctors, it was something that got him out of the house. And it was someone to talk to him and it was something to take his mind for a split second of everything else that was going on.?

Noise Solution: What were your experiences with everything else that was going on around him??

Parent: We found that school wasn’t helpful at all.?

Noise Solution: So he wasn’t engaging with school, he wasn’t engaging with anything else but he did engage with the Noise solution provision??

Parent: Yeah.?

Noise Solution: Was it because he… did he have an interest in music before??

Parent: He did yeah… well, his dad it has been a D.J. Not so much now but really interested in music, John always liked the old school music like his dad liked, like Michael Jackson, Motown Michael Jackson was just his way of escaping really, he just put headphones on and just blocked everything out so. I think that’s why Noise solution was so good because it was something he was already interested in. And that just helped, I think it reminded him that there was something that could help him through other than medicine, which didn’t work for him in the end and talking to people which he found quite difficult to do. He is a very private person and he found that quite difficult to open up to people. Yeah…?

Noise Solution: So what difference did you see once we start working with him??

Parent: He started smiling. Which to most people doesn’t seem like much but when you’ve been stuck in your room for months and you’ve lost most of your friends and nothing else seems to been working for him. Just getting on the keyboards and getting in a routine where he knew he had tasks to do and he had to do it before he saw you again. And he was really proud of himself for doing little things, it was a sense of pride and this sense of not being crap at stuff, even though I am not going to school I can still do stuff.?

Noise Solution: OK what role did the digital blogging side of Noise Solution play for you? (Noise Solution use an online platform to share participants success in the form of an updated digital story every week, showing the highlights of each session, that family can comment on)

Parent: We found it amazing that he could do stuff on the computer and we could go on as a family and see what he’d been doing. That was brilliant because we actually got to see pictures and videos of him doing things and enjoying and interacting with someone. And leaving comments which he must have been embarrassed of us saying to his face because we could leave it on the website… And I think my mum found that really helpful because she could tell him how proud she was of him without him being really embarrassed and not wanting to hear it, so that was really good.?

Noise Solution: And did you talk about that outside Noise solution??

Parent: Yeah, we did. yeah… A lot of it we spoke about once he had started to get better. And he’d to go back on the blog and can look at it even after we had stopped doing the session. And he’d say I can’t believe how far I’ve come, can’t believe I was doing this and now I’m doing other stuff, so I think it was a huge starting point for him. Back into the real world.?

Noise Solution: If it hadn’t come along… What do think would have happened??

Parent: I don’t think he would have gone on to college, I don’t think he would have gone on to get a job, he probably wouldn’t have linked up with his friends again. I think he just would have got worse and I don’t actually know if he would have been here today. It was just a stepping stone to get him out of that very dark place at the time.?

Noise Solution: How important do you think the Noise solution was as a catalyst? If we’re going to scale it from one to ten and one meant it didn’t matter at all and ten meant it was amazing..?

Parent: Nine, I think. Yeah-yeah. It was huge. Because he just wasn’t talking to anybody else.?

Noise Solution: He became motivated (through his work with Noise Solution)??

Parent: Yeah. He came off all these medications of about 2 or 3 months, then started running. Then he started going to the gym, lost all the weight he had put on with the medication, which made him more confident to go out with his friends again. so he gradually started hooking up with friends that he had from school. And then he went to Catch 22 which was like an education, so it was like college but students who have missed school. Then from there they took him to college interview where he did mechanical engineering at college and while he was there he did maths and English, so he passed them. Then he got a part time job in Iceland, which he hated. [laughter] Saved up money for driving lessons, did his driving lessons.?

Noise Solution: Do you think any of this would have happened if he hadn’t been involved with Noise Solution??

Parent: No. It wouldn’t have happened. Thank you. We did not think that he would ever get to this point but it’s really like he’s now like he was before he got ill but better. He said “I feel better now than other people I know”. He said “I’ve done more in this last 2 or 3 years than the people that I went to school with who didn’t miss out on any school”

You can read more stories like this in our case studies document here.