Taking Troubled Youths Out Of Their Troubled Lives

It was mainly teachers who thought we were bad news, not that I blame them for having that attitude, nine times out of ten there are those kids that just want to cause hassle and don’t want to change. 

John came along and just had a lot of respect for young people, the focus from every other adult at the time was young people are trouble, but John never looked at us like that. He treated us like equals, spoke to us on our level and was good to us, no matter what we put out there. He gained a lot of respect for that.

Honestly, I refused to go to school at one point as I was having so much hassle there. He used to come to the house to get me out of bed, he didn’t care how much crap I gave him. In the end I just used to get up and go, it was easier than having him on my back all day. 

It helped massively, gave me the motivation to get up and get out there. Knowing someone cared enough about where I was made the difference. He saw through the attitude I was giving him and helped me. When he realised how bad the bullying really was, he sorted an out of school thing for a while, he valued education and wanted the work to still get done. He wouldn’t leave meetings with the staff and headteacher until he was happy with what they were doing, he’d just sit there, sometimes for hours, waiting until they done right by me.

I met John through an outreach group that we were referred to through social services when we were having a hard time. It was me and my brother and sister, until we each turned 16yrs. I was the oldest, so John kept me on for a bit longer as he thought I needed it, that outlet. 

It was a programme taking troubled youths out for the day, but what it was really doing was taking them out of their troubled lives. We went ice skating, paint-balling, on residentials. 

It helped such a lot, taking us out of our toxic environments gave us time to just breathe and just be. In that process he never made us feel bad for anything, he was always like “well its happened, we’re here now, let’s just sort it out and have some fun while we’re here”. 

There was a group of us all in our mid-teens at the time and we did NOT get on, all arguing, stropping and everything. One time he’d arranged an activity and he dropped us off to Harwich with this team of adults and a boat. 

He just left us there, saying he’d see us in a week when we returned from sailing to Kent. He warned us that we wouldn’t get anywhere if we didn’t work together. Don’t get me wrong it was a nightmare, we were still arguing days in, we were sea sick, trying to navigate, sail, just stay up on our feet.  We were all stuck on a boat together so in the end we didn’t have much choice but to get on with it. We sailed from Harwich to Kent and back. We done it.

When we got back, John was waiting on the side and the sailing team wanted us to show him what we’d learnt. He stood there watching us take the sails down, with tears streaming down his face. He was so proud he cried. It made me feel pretty proud of myself too. It was so genuine, he was beaming. 

What John did was change my mind set. When I met him I was in the mode that everything was crap, I’m not doing it, I’m not good enough. I was struggling so badly with mental health, I was completely self destructive. 

He used to tell us “you don’t have a choice”. He knew what we were going through, how we were feeling when we’d be having a hard time or whatever, but he showed us that sometimes, we just had to get on with things.

He was like, “start off positive and the rest will come”. He used so much encouragement that you felt far better about yourself. He’d say “You can do it and once you have, you’ll feel pretty great about it”. I’d end up thinking after being praised for the most minor of things – well I must be half decent then!

Even now, I sometimes think to myself, you know what you are pretty quality. Even today, having got this whole hallway painted on my first day off in weeks before even doing the school run, I think yep, high five Kelley. 

He did so much that completely changed the path that I was on. Where I was living at the time it was all postcodes and hanging on street corners. He came and picked me up from the street one day telling me “You’re not hanging about on street corners, get in the car, the group are going ice skating”. He would come and find us wherever we were, for better or worse. 

I wouldn’t have my daughter it wasn’t for that time with the outreach project. I wouldn’t have met my partner, I wouldn’t have my job – my manager was in the outreach group with me and she helped me get it.

I got in touch recently, I wanted to let John know we all turned out good. He wouldn’t know that me and my sister both have children, he didn’t know that my stepdad had died, that we are all working. That he’d changed our lives. He was so chuffed for us. Again.

And I can be chuffed for me too. 

John said to me once, “success doesn’t mean that you’ve got to have a big job with an amazing house and car. You can go to work, keep a roof over your head, stick with good relationships, put food on your child’s plate and that, that’s success”. 

When I first had my daughter my partner was working but I wasn’t, I didn’t want to be the stereotypical stay-at-home mum watching daytime tv. But I could tell myself, no, I’m bringing up my daughter, there’s a roof over her head, food in her tummy, I’m taking care of her and raising a half decent human being to put out into the world. And that, that’s success.