RT joined Yep! with Pluss in Spring 2024. He has Autistic Spectrum Disorder, is very high functioning and had gained multiple GCSE’s and a Level 3 Personal & Professional Development qualification. However he needed to manage his social anxiety in certain situations. Prior to joining Yep! RT had been at home for over 12 months, struggling to find motivation and confidence to make any steps towards his goals. RT has also been diagnosed with diabetes, which meant he had to stop driving lessons which impacted on his mental health.

He wanted to find some employment, develop his confidence and motivation. His long-term goal is to become an Estate Agent, these goals were discussed and broken down into small steps to move him in a positive direction.

His 1:1 support with his Coach Jon worked well, they built trust and RT was open and honest. They worked on job search, producing a CV, employer expectations and interview preparation.

RT’s confidence developed quite quickly over the first two months and things started to improve, his mental health improved and there was less of a need to focus on supporting him with these things using external support.

RT has loads more confidence in himself and now understands how he can be a valuable member of society. He still has the same barriers, but is managing them, it is a joy to see how happy he is.

RT has gained a position at a Jewellers as a sales person, his social life has improved massively, he now has a girlfriend and is very happy. He frequently travels out of county to see her and is socialising with her friends as well.

He has totally achieved and exceeded his short-term goals and his new job in Sales is the 1st step towards his long term goals.

‘To start with I believe I heard about this through the GP maybe after I had been struggling a lot with my mental health.

I left college around 2021 and wasn’t in education for coming up to 3 years which truthfully took a bit of a toll on my overall confidence, especially in social situations which wasn’t helped by my already diagnosed anxiety. With my mental health diagnoses (depression, social anxiety, ASD) it was very difficult for me to even think about socialising in any sort of professional way to attempt finding a job.

Although it was really these sessions that helped me through most of it, it never felt like any forced employment situation instead we could sit at our meetings and I could just talk about the things affecting me and how my life was just generally going and that initially helped me a ton because it broke down that barrier of needing to be a certain person and just showing that I could be me for these meetings even before we actually worked on all the important things like building a new CV, job searching and just having those sensible discussions about my future plans.

And now 6 or so months on the difference is staggering. I’ve started a wonderful relationship, I’m much more up to socialising and breaking through my comfort zone (although it’s still a big struggle) and I’m even now going to start work .