By Juliet Nottingham

Copyright birminghammail

It was 2016 when Joe Lockley began providing regular boxing sessions for local young people in Cosford. Two years later, with the support of his fellow director Kat Stanworth, Joe moved the coaching sessions into an industrial warehouse in nearby Shifnal – and a safe haven was born. Almost 10 years later, Brightstar Boxing Academy has provided a blueprint for how sport can transform the lives of young people facing some of modern society’s most complex challenges. Its founder and Kat are now on a mission to help more local organisations across the regions flourish in a similar fashion. “It is about utilising sport as a completely different approach,” explains Joe. “It is all about using sport to help young people meet their needs, and so they feel like they belong. “It’s about helping them to believe in themselves, and giving them that sense of that control and autonomy, to help them feel safe and feel loved.” Tall and broad with the build of a boxer, Joe’s success has less to do with his sporting talents than the formation of a not-for-profit organisation that has supported more than 7000 young people across the West Midlands – including many in Alternative Provision to mainstream education. It all began during a boxing session with his friend Stu at his local gym, when a parent approached the pair to ask if they could help his child through some behavioural challenges. Avenues with mainstream services had either been exhausted or had little or no impact, and the parent felt they had nowhere else to turn. Ever since then, there has been an unrelenting focus on the needs of young people, and bringing together the systems and sectors that swirl around them but all too often fail to connect and help them, which, along with the boxing, has helped Brightstar to stand out. “Boxing is about building that relationship with the young person, and then helping them when they are in that positive state,” Joe explains. “If we start to ask the right open questions about where they want to be, they will soon make the choice that school is a better fit for them. “When they start to see that for themselves, that’s when we start to see changes.” As an example of Brightstar’s success, 78% of a recent cohort reported they felt more positive about their futures, 72% said their mental health had improved, and 73% had better anger management. Crucially, many were able to go back into mainstream education. The organisation is now looking to expand its ambitious portfolio of projects and help address some of the issues and challenges that have hit the headlines, such as toxic masculinity and negative online influences following Netflix’s recent ‘Adolescence’ series. “It really shone a light on a lot of the things we see all of the time anyway,” says Joe. “What they looked at was the online side of things, but if you look way under that, it all came down to that feeling of wanting to feel a sense of belonging. It’s about the needs not being met, way before that.” To underline this, Brightstar’s innovative Alternative Provision programme, called ‘Futures’, aims to reintroduce young people back into mainstream education environments through relaxed psychotherapy sessions and mentoring. Joe recalls how the programme was developed, and describes the difference in how a young person might view their situation compared to a school. “When I spoke to the schools, they had a completely different picture of the reasons why the young person wasn’t attending,” he reflects. “One person in a school assumed the student couldn’t be bothered with it. But when talking to the student, he said ‘When I’m in that school, I feel like I’m in a really bad headspace that I really struggle with.” This empathy for young people, alongside a deep knowledge and experience of the structures and sectors that Brightstar bridges, helped the organisation stand out. “We say ‘it takes a village to raise a child’,” he continues. “If we can educate sports on how they can better align with the education sector and the youth sector, that would be incredible.” Joe praises the local partners who have come together to support Brightstar over recent years, from council to corporate supporters. “Locally, it seems we have that sorted. We seem to have those sectors working together; they all want to help and understand how their role helps in a young person’s future. “It’s about having that young person in mind with everything, hearing their story and getting their voice across.” Now the aim is to scale up its impact by rolling out the model. While still in the early stages of development, Brightstar plans to offer its expertise to more organisations further afield so they too can unlock the benefits of multi-sector partnerships. “There are so many sports clubs that want to better align with different sectors, but they don’t know how to do it,” he says. “They don’t know how to set up a referral pathway, or they don’t know how to get funded. Perhaps they don’t know how to work with a young person to help them become the best they can be – but they want to do it.” Ultimately, however, the day-to-day focus remains on the young people who join Brightstar’s programmes, whether that’s at its purpose-built premises in Shifnal, or at one of its many schemes across Walsall , Wolverhampton and Birmingham . “It’s been absolutely life-changing,” explains one parent, whose child has been attending Brightstar for nearly a year. “I always thought ‘give your child love, give them a safe home, give them the things they need, and that’s all they need’. But when your child is not okay and you don’t know why, you can’t be happy. We didn’t know where to turn. “I feel like (mainstream) services are just scratching the surface a lot of the time, we don’t get to the root cause of issues. We just try and think around the symptoms. “Until I met Joe and his team, every professional that I met listened, but they didn’t hear. Joe has a deep understanding of young people and how to help. I used to cry myself to sleep at night, worrying about my son, and we’re just miles away from that place now. A large part of that is thanks to Brightstar.” Another parent says about her son: “We’ve noticed he has better tools now to self-regulate. They don’t always work, but afterwards, he’s really reflective; he never really was before. “Perhaps these children feel different in some ways…. but they all feel accepted at Brightstar, and that’s what’s great about it. They can go there and not feel judged. It’s a safe space. Whatever is happening outside of those doors, inside is safe.” Read more at brightstarboxing.co.uk