A New Era

Stevie Kidd People and KDS Group are delighted to announce that we are going to be working with Stephen McDonald. Stephen is 17 years old and has Asperger’s Syndrome.

Stephen came into the world of KDS whilst participating in The Recruit programme earlier this year. Whilst participating in the KDS challenge Stephen was offered the opportunity to work with Stevie Kidd on a one to one basis. He took up this opportunity and had 2 personal mentoring sessions.

These sessions had a huge impact on Stephen as he was facing multiple challenges including issues with confidence and self belief. Stevie was able to work with him and help him to identify the factors that were causing him to feel this way. It was during these sessions that it came to fruition that Stephen has Asperger’s Syndrome.

Stephen’s family also noticed that when he was working with Stevie he had so much more confidence and that he was achieving things that he wouldn’t have before. On 26th October 2010, more the 2 months after The Recruit ended, Stephen’s mum, Elaine got in touch with Stevie and asked for a meeting.

Stevie spent half an hour with her and the conversation was based around Elaine’s fear for Stephen’s future. Stephen has decided to leave school and with no positive destination in place his family are beginning to become concerned. Elaine asked Stevie to get involved by providing Stephen with some motivational exercises to help him to determine a clear focus and pathway for his future.

Stevie left the meeting telling Elaine that Stephen should email him and that he would be happy to provide him with some exercises and guidance.

Throughout the course of the day Stevie couldn’t settle and kept going back over the information, he called a meeting with KDS Group Head of Training, Andrew Craig and the decision was made that we would create a model for working with not only Stephen but other young people who suffer from the same condition.

We will be working in partnership with Stephen’s school and psychologist to facilitate Stephen coming into our business on a day release basis from school. Here he will be mentored by Stevie but will also be set business tasks and asked to really focus on his goals for the future.

We will have approximately 7 months to work with Stephen until the end of the school term.

Closure will be supporting Stephen into a positive destination whether this be further education or employment.

Stephen and his family couldn’t be happier and they have agreed to us tracking Stephen’s journey via a dedicated page on our website. This will be an amazing journey so keep up with it via our blogs and Stephen’s page which is coming soon.

1 Comment

Posted by Elaine McDonald on 29 October 2010

i would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to stevie and his team for making this dream a reality for stephen ,and also for believing in him . stephen has worked really hard to get where he is now really took on board everything that stevie said to him and really enjoyed the experience when doing the recruit. After my meeting with stevie i felt elated that stevie was going to help stephen by giving him help and advice. now further to this stevie and his team are going to give stephen this amazing opportunity to get the most from his life and to take it even further, i am so looking forward to see stephens confidence and outlook to life growing and for that i thank you all for your time and dedication to this

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