Creating a much needed change!!!

My name is Elizabeth Scarborough, and I am the founder of Young Soul Education CIC a community-led project created from lived experience, professional training, and a deep understanding of how stress, anxiety, and overwhelm affect our children.

I am a Holistic Counsellor and a mother of a child who struggles with school-related anxiety and shutdown. I know first-hand what it feels like to watch your child freeze, panic, or completely shut down in an environment that feels too loud, too unpredictable, and too overwhelming for their nervous system.

For years I’ve walked this path trying to understand why my daughter couldn’t cope with school, searching for support that didn’t exist, and piecing together what genuinely helps children who feel unsafe in traditional educational settings. Through this, I learned how deeply sensitive and neurodiverse children absorb the world around them, and how quickly their bodies go into stress or overwhelm without meaning to.

This experience shaped my mission.

🌟 WHAT I DO

Young Soul Education CIC was created to support children who experience:

• School anxiety
• Emotional overwhelm
• Shutdown and freeze responses
• School avoidance or refusal
• Sensory and nervous system overload
• Inconsistent attendance due to anxiety

So many children fall into the “missing middle” — not diagnosed, not supported, and not able to cope. Schools are stretched, families feel lost, and children are left without the emotional safety they need to function.

My work combines:

✔ Holistic counselling

Understanding the emotional, physical, and nervous system responses behind a child’s behaviour.

✔ Trauma-informed practice

Creating safe environments where a child’s body can calm before learning can happen.

✔ Nervous system regulation

Helping children reconnect to their breath, body, and sense of safety.

✔ Gentle educational support

Not heavy academics — but soft learning that re-builds confidence and focus slowly.

✔ Parent support

Helping parents understand their child’s nervous system and emotional needs.

OUR MISSION

To create safe, calm, therapeutic hubs where children who cannot cope with the school environment can come to:

• Regulate
• Reset
• Feel safe
• Learn gently
• Rebuild their confidence
• Prepare to return to school at their own pace

This is not an alternative to school.

It is a bridge a stepping-stone that brings safety back into learning.

My vision is to pilot this model in Sidcup, then expand to other areas where families are struggling and support systems are overwhelmed.

WHY THIS MATTERS

There are an estimated 1.8 million children in the UK who regularly avoid school due to anxiety, sensory overload, or emotional shutdown.

These children are not “naughty.”

They are not “lazy.”

And they are not choosing to stay home.

Their nervous system is trying to protect them.

Young Soul Education CIC exists to ensure these children and their families have somewhere to turn. Somewhere that truly understands them. Somewhere that supports them emotionally, mentally, and educationally without pressure or judgement.