Team turning around young men’s lives on a shoestring
A TEAM supporting men aged between 16 and 35 have explained how the hard work they do on a shoestring is difficult but rewarding.
Youth Thirst, on Redcliffe Road in Mapperley, has been running for eight years and at the moment there are 10 men housed at the property.
The organisation receives a small amount of money per resident from Nottingham City Council, which pays for around 60% of the costs, and the rest is made up through donations and voluntary work.
Support workers Bernadine Dyer and Terri Gordon, both from Nottingham, explained more about the work they do.
Bernadine said: “We’re on call 24/7.
“We’ve had calls at 2 and 3 in the morning and we’ve been doing a lot of things out of our own pockets. We do that regularly. There’s zero funding, we haven’t had any funding for years. A lot of things are solely on us because this isn’t a big government organisation.
“We wanted to create something and provide a clean home for the youths.
“We take a non-judgmental approach because what these boys see written about them sometimes on paper can be very damaging and slowly, we get them to understand that there is more to them and their life.”
Bernadine said she hoped her organisation was filling a gap in the kind of services available to young men in difficulty.
She said: “I used to work for another organisation and I just thought there was a bit in the market that didn’t focus on addiction and mental health for single males that have nothing for them.
“The boys that we work with show vulnerability in different ways.
“Some of the people we’ve seen have been failed by the prison system and for eight years, we’ve just been battling on, helping them. Sometimes we can’t help them, we’re not God, they go on and commit crime again but we have successful ones too.”
Terri Gordon explained how communication and life skills are some of the important basics they teach to their residents.
She said: “We go on to support the successful ones and keep on giving them life skills. Or, we’re just here for them to have someone to talk to and it could be about anything: healthy relationships, parenting, sometimes we help these boys get contact with their own children.
“There’s nothing we don’t do, we’ve had good turnovers and bad ones but our door is always open.
“Through difficulties, we’ve helped people with court cases, immigration cases - and we’ve been successful. We let the judge know what they’re really like and not what it says on paper. If we judged people that came here based on what it says on paper, we’d have hardly looked after anyone.”
Terri explained how when looking for a job, a lot of residents aren’t taken seriously by the authorities.
She said: “A lot of the boys are disregarded by agencies. And then they’ll see me talk to people on the phone and I get taken seriously, just because I’ve got a job and then they think ‘well, what’s the point then?’
“The youths do speak differently, they act differently but that’s not them being rude or anything it’s them expressing themselves.
“People think it’s all fun and games because we’re working with the youths but it’s hard. It’s hard seeing them cry or going through a hard time but the fact that they know they can cry in front of us shows that we’re doing our jobs right.”
Troy, a resident who has been living at Youth Thirst for around a year, said: “It’s alright here, I get the support that I need.
“I’ve been here nearly a year and I’ve gotten help here, I’m not very good at speaking, but since being here, that’s gotten better. It’s good here, it’s better and I’m friends with everyone in here.”
Terri explained that a lot of other supported accommodations are different but at Youth Thirst, they provide a clean environment with Wi-fi - which some hostels don’t offer - and around-the-clock support.
She said: “We don’t want to be finding young people dead.
“In other accommodations, they’re housed with not enough care and they’ll be living with other drug addicts and it’s easy for them to fall back into old ways because it’s all around them.”
Bernadine explained how, years ago, there was more for young people to do.
She said: “There used to be loads of things like free swimming and activities. The poor are just getting poorer.
Things that matter just keep on getting closed down - there’s a lack of opportunities out there.”
Terri added: “Even bus fare is more expensive. There’s absolutely nothing to do, everything is just expensive or extortionate, authorities expect all these children to be fine but they have nothing to access.”
The boys we work with show vulnerability in different ways.
Bernadine Dyer, Youth Thirst