How Veterans 4 Youth Is Making A Difference For Young Australians

There is little doubt that the pressure on parents to raise perfect children has never been greater, Veterans 4 Youth CEO Leo O’Reilly. Here Leo talks about the unique ways his organisation works to help our young Australians.

The sense of community that once embraced our children is all but a memory and the role of the extended family nurturing children has been severely eroded.

That leaves parents trying to be all things to all people with very little support.

So after a year of successful programs for young people, Veterans 4 Youth has decided to extend its programs to include adults.

Veterans for Youth has been running character development courses for young people aged 12 to 17 years old since the beginning of 2016 with some stunning results, but it has become clear from the feedback that the training needs to be more inclusive of the whole family unit.

As a result, we’re introducing a one day Parenting Program to support the “Life Ammo” Programs their children attend.

We’ve designed the Parenting Program to make the “Life Ammo” Programs more about the family team rather than just the individual child.

Training the kids is just one part of the equation and to make that training stick it’s important that we help to fix the environment that contributed to the problems in the first place.

Let me be completely clear, I’m not blaming parents.

What I am saying is that we can provide parents with a set of tools to manage difficult situations at home based on the values we teach their children.

At the same time we can show them the methods we use on our Life Ammo programs so that parents can maintain that momentum after their kids get home.

We established Veterans 4 Youth late last year to tackle what we identified as systemic failures in the education of children.

We employ Military Veterans who use their unique training skills to teach young people simple life skills and correct problem behaviour such as addiction to computer games, disrespect for their parents or teachers, disobedience, a lack of self-confidence and bad manners.

The scheme gives young people a whole new character development experience, creates jobs for veterans and prepares young Australians for life as adults.

Unfortunately some of the feedback from our programs suggests that some young people slowly return to old habits when they return home because nothing about their environment has changed.

If problem behavior is a product of a child’s home environment then we need to look at that environment and see if it can be changed.

Part of the Parenting Program includes the development of an individually tailored action plan for parents to take home with them along with a work book of actions that can be taken in certain situations.

We don’t claim to have all the answers to problem behavior and we never have made that claim.

What we do have is a training system that works wonders for many young people and we will continue to offer our services for as long as there is a demand.

Find out about the Veterans 4 Youth Parenting Programmes here.