One of the easiest cohorts of struggling youth for society to turn its back on is young people caught up in the criminal justice system. These are teenagers who have already run afoul of the law, facing charges or even locked up in a youth justice precinct. There are those who would already be prepared to write them off as a lost cause.

But not Jesuit Social Services’ Ignatius Learning Centre, and not the Ross Trust, which has committed to funding their work. These lost young people can still have a healthy future. 

The Ignatius Learning Centre began in 2021, in Richmond, offering trauma-informed education to boys aged 15-17, many from migrant or refugee backgrounds, who were tangled in the youth justice system or had just been disengaged from the education system for an extended period. The school commits to providing a safe, holistic, and therapeutic learning environment, promoting the development of the whole person – including intellectual, physical, social, emotional, cultural and spiritual growth.

“This cohort presents a heap of challenges,” said Ignatius principal John Andrew, who came from seven years’ experience within the Parkville Youth Justice Precinct. “We need to adjust and cater for young people who have historically not had great experiences of school and usually haven’t been engaged with school for a long time. We need to present a different model and engagement approach.

“We find that the model of smaller class sizes and smaller cohorts are more effective for them. Just with dynamics, friendship groups and that sort of thing, we find that we are only able to service a certain number of students,” he said.

Already, the school has shown such promising results that a second campus is being planned, to service the north-western suburbs of Melbourne. Based in Sunshine and literally across the street from another Jesuit Social Services program offering mental health support, the building chosen for the new school – supported by a grant from The Ross Trust – used to be a youth justice building. The wheel has fully turned for both the building and the teenagers now walking through its doors in search of a better education and improved life prospects.

Due to open in 2026, the Sunshine campus will follow Richmond’s model, very student centred and strongly informed by the boys’ needs, rather than the educational milestones other schools would feel pressure to complete.

“Our approach is built on relationships, empathy and unconditional positive regard,” John explained.  “Those things which then enable you to meet a student where they’re at. It’s not about us and our curriculum and having to meet outcomes and deadlines, and that sort of thing. It’s about meeting every individual student where they’re at, which might be just building rapport and a relationship before we start to think about curriculum outcomes. Then again, it could be about a student with whom we have been able to build up that relationship over time and it’s about having really high expectations of them. 

“We’re really clear with what we want to achieve at Ignatius. The school is about safety and learning, and we always want to be pushing towards that. We know that students will learn if they can, and we always want to try and give them the possibility or the vessel to be able to get there, if they can. When you keep students at the centre of it, that’s when you get the engagement.”

A Ross Trust grant-making ethos is a belief that “every young person deserves an education that supports their identity, potential and connection to community – no matter who they are or where they live.” Support for the new Sunshine campus will aid potential students with geographic isolation, potential transport issues and assisting transition back to community life. Educational strategies embrace a focus on mentoring, non-violent problem-solving and identity formation.

Research shows that young people caught up the justice system are likely to experience long-term disengagement from education as well as housing instability, trauma and systematic exclusion from the wider community. Most of the young people the Ignatius Learning Centre welcomes are from regions identified as ones with entrenched disadvantage.

A powerful part of the plan is simply treating these potentially lost teenagers with respect. “That’s a big one,” John said. “Giving them agency as well as choice, in that they can choose every day what they want to do. We say: ‘This is what we have here; we’re not going to force you’. We think the boys probably aren’t going to do it unless they really buy into it.”