The Prince's Trust Scotland awards: Celebrating achievement in the face of adversity

Published on Wednesday 3 November 2010 16:57

The Prince's Trust Scotland awards celebrate young people who have defied hardship to build a better future. Claire Black met some of this year's successes

• Heather Johnston, above, learned practical skills and, more importantly, a sense of self worth by taking part in the Prince's Trust Scotland Team project, which she says transformed her and daughter Andi's lives. Picture: Phil Wilkinson

'I SEE a lot of kids in first and second year at school who are almost at the stage that I was. They do want to change but they just don't know how to. I just want to tell them it's not too late."

Simple, sage advice and in its own way heartbreaking. These are the words of 15-year-old Theresa Minnes. Theresa is in her fifth year at secondary school. She's studying to go to college, she works part-time as a mechanic and is an ambassador for The Prince's Trust. She's an articulate girl with a bright future. Two years ago, Theresa's prospects looked very, very different.

Disruptive at school with erratic attendance and challenging behaviour, she was struggling.

"I hated school," she says. "I was on the brink of dropping out completely by second year. I'd try to skive all the time and if I got forced to come in I wouldn't do any work. I just didn't feel that anyone understood where I was coming from."

Theresa failed her end-of-year exams in third year and her behaviour was spiralling. With few other options, she was offered a place on The Prince's Trust XL course, a three-hour-a-week class delivered by the school youth worker designed to help pupils re-engage through a series of practical activities. XL changed Theresa's life.

The group Theresa was in did a sponsored walk, made calendars and created and presented a radio show. Very quickly she showed her potential - she liked the hands-on approach, showed leadership skills and blossomed under the praise she received. Suddenly, the future was looking much brighter for the teenager.

The Prince's Trust Scotland works with disadvantaged young people aged between 14 and 25. They are young people who have, somehow, for many different reasons, slipped between the cracks. School isn't working out, a job hasn't materialised, no training course has a place for them. They are young people who are in danger of being forgotten or worse, being seen as only a problem, but if Theresa is anything to go by they are also young people brimming with untapped potential.

Recently Theresa gave a talk about her experiences. When she finished speaking the audience were on their feet and half were in tears.What did she tell them?

"I basically told them what my life was like before XL," she says. "I told them how I had witnessed a lot of alcohol and drug abuse and violence and a lot of other things that I really shouldn't have been exposed to. I told them that I had been in a lot of trouble both with the police and at school.

"I was quite violent, I had been suspended for throwing tables and chairs in school.

"I told them that since I'd been involved with the Prince's Trust I'd held down a job as a mechanic and I'm still at school. I'm working towards going to college. I'm not violent any more, I'm a lot calmer."

Such is Theresa's achievement she has been nominated for the Educational Achiever Award at the Prince's Trust annual Celebrate Success Award Ceremony to be held next week. For Geraldine Gammell, director of the Trust in Scotland, the ceremony is a chance to highlight the achievements of the young people for whom the charity exists.

"We're recognising and celebrating what they've achieved," she says. "That endorsement is another nugget in the building of their self-esteem, particularly when they can come along with some of the people who have supported them on that journey."

For Gammell the awards ceremony is also a chance to battle the prejudices that many young people face. "In society we label, but the labelling of these hardest-to-reach young people can be extremely limiting. So often the young people we support are viewed as the hoodies and the neds, the wider audience out there doesn't realise who they really are and what their potential is. To give them the opportunity to change that, to say 'we're more than that' is absolutely vital."

Steve Hardie, now 24, was 16 when he left school. Steve had passed his Standard Grades and stayed on to fifth year, but then things began to fall apart. He began to feel depressed and when he left school, it got worse. "I couldn't get over it," he says. "I was led to believe if you mucked up school then you'd mucked up the rest of your life. I genuinely believed that's what I had done."

Steve worked in McDonald's for a while but struggled to cope. He did some part-time studying, managed to complete a foundation course and an HNC in fine art before going to Dundee College to study illustration. And then he suffered another devastating blow, being subjected to an unprovoked assault on the high street of his home town. His jaw was broken and he was hospitalised for three days. His broken bones healed but the lasting impact was that his fragile self-confidence was shattered. He became agoraphobic and suicidal.

"I went into self-destruct mode. I was living on my own by that stage and I could barely leave the house. I started to self-harm and even tried to kill myself. I was in a really bad way."

Steve was 19. For the next four years, he was caught in a vicious circle, he started using drugs to avoid the reality of his situation.And then, following a recommendation from a psychologist he was working with, Steve got in touch with the Prince's Trust.

He enrolled in the Trust's three-month Team personal development programme. Doing community work and outdoor activities gave Steve the boost he needed.

"It was totally amazing," he says. "I got the chance to try things there that I don't know if I'll ever get the chance to do again in my life. Gorge-walking, climbing up waterfalls, mountain biking. It was fun.

"I keep in touch with some of the people I did that with and we're all doing something with ourselves now because of the Trust."

Steve now works as a part-time youth worker. He has been nominated for the Young Achiever of the Year award.

The problems that some young people in Scotland face - dysfunctional home lives, drug and alcohol abuse, behavioural problems - can seem insurmountable.

But what young people like Theresa and Steve show is that the right approach, which can utterly transform a young person's life, is, at least for some, remarkably straightforward.

The XL project takes place in school for only three hours a week. Team takes place over just 12 weeks. Seventy-eight per cent of young people who completed XL in 2009 continued with their education, moved on to training or found a job.

Of the 800 people a year helped by the team, roughly three-quarters of them move on to a a job or training or education upon completion.

Given that it costs 128 per day to keep a young person in a young offenders' institution, or that youth crime costs Scotland 253,000 per month, the cost of the right help from organisations such as The Prince's Trust is a bargain in comparison. It costs around 1,000 to put a young person through a Trust programme.

For Theresa, the difference that the Prince's Trust has made to her life is priceless.

"It helped me get a starting point for my life and to become a better role model for my two younger sisters.

"It's helped my make my mum and stepdad proud of me, helped me to get good qualifications and to forget the bad things that have happened to me in my past. I know that there is hope for me out there."

• The Prince's Trust Scotland Celebrate Success Awards will be held at Prestonfield House hotel on 9 November. The awards are sponsored by The Arnold Clark Group, CR Smith, AG Barr, Prestonfield, The Martin Currie Charitable Foundation and The Scotsman.

HEATHER'S STORY

HEATHER JOHNSTON has written her story down because of the "massive" impact the Prince's Trust has had on her life. "The Prince's Trust arrived just at the right time for me," says the 22-year-old. "I don't think if it had been a year before I would've been able to do it. But by then I was really looking for a way out.

"It was like living in a black hole, there was no light, no hope, no dreams, no ambitions, no self-respect or self-esteem. I was surviving only by breathing. Drugs, alcohol, violence, fear everyday."I had no friends, no job. I was a heavy smoker, I didn't eat healthily. I had no future worth living for."

At the time she says she had no sense of what she could do to get herself and her daughter, Andi Bett, then just two, out of their situation.

Heather left school with no qualifications. At 16 she'd been homeless, living in hostels in Edinburgh. She ended up in a "very unhealthy" relationship. When her life became more stable she tried to go to college but, with no qualifications, she couldn't get in. It was someone at the college who mentioned the Prince's Trust and Heather knew it was her chance. "I just thought it would be the answer to my prayers," she says.

Heather enrolled on the Team project. One of 15 in a group fundraising to undertake community activities. "We built a playhouse at the Sick Kids (hospital in Edinburgh]," she says. "We painted a homeless hostel - royal blue - and cleaned up a primary school winter garden."

Heather gained practical skills, such as first aid, but it was the less tangible, softer skills that have had the most impact.

"I got a sense of belief that I could do whatever I wanted as long as I try," she says.

"The Prince's Trust saved my life," she adds.

Now enrolled in a youth and community work course at Stevenson College in the city, Heather has been nominated for the Breakthrough Award at the Celebrate Success event.