Helping young people turn their lives around
There are two sorts of people - those who see the positive in things and those who see the negative. Dr Lukas Carey is the former. He experienced a challenging childhood - he witnessed alcoholism and other issues at home growing up and admits he needed a positive role model to help steer him in the right direction. He needed to - in his words - "find my person". Sadly, Dr Carey's life spiralled out of control before he was able to do this. He was found guilty of white collar crime and found himself behind bars.
He admits he was "doing too much for other people" and focusing on the wrong things. "When I was fighting for the extra hustle, or fighting for the extra dollar in the bank account to get a new car or a new house, that ended up causing me to do what I did." He quickly realised he had to "own my shit". "As soon as I knew I was flawed, I realised I had some things I had to get better at," Dr Carey said. "I thought 'I'm either going to turn into a 150 kilogram piece of crap that my two young sons are going to look at and say I don't want anything to do with this guy or I could turn things around'."
Dr Carey said he wanted his sons to one day Google him and be proud of his accomplishments. "I want them to say 'my dad stuffed up and went to jail, but look at what he's done since he went to jail to make changes to himself and to others'."
Dr Carey works closely with students at Western Australia's Youth Futures Community School. "We have some beautiful young people who just need a bit of extra help," he said. "We're a care school - we look after all the kids who get kicked out of every other school."
Dr Carey said young people got kicked out of schools for a whole host of reasons, most which may have to do with the environment they are brought up in. "They get kicked out for drugs, alcohol, juvenile justice issues, mental health, gender issues."
Dr Carey said he was dedicated to giving people a chance to redeem themselves. "We give them a second, third, fourth, 15th, 400th chance to stay at school. I still haven't met a bad kid in my life. I've met a lot of kids who have been screwed up by their parents and their environment, but I still haven't met a bad kid."
Dr Carey has done a lot of research into helping young people turn their lives around. He recently visited the US as part of a fellowship and visited an organisation in Las Vegas called The Harbor. "I encourage people to have a look at that model in Las Vegas," he said. "It is by far the most complete wraparound service for early intervention for young people I have ever seen."
Dr Carey said his advice for people wanting to turn their lives around was to "be authentic". "When I'm not being authentic, I'm lying to myself," he said. "I've done enough of that over the years."
Dr Carey said schools needed to be more accommodating and flexible, rather than labelling students in a certain way and expelling them. "If I ain't going to advocate for these kids, then who is? The reality is, there are four outcomes for kids that don't end up at our school. They end up in jail, pregnant, on drugs, or dead and that's no dramatisation because all four of them happen and happen regularly. So we've just got to try and make sure they don't."
Find out more about Dr Carey here.
Listen to the live here.
