Canberra teenager Greg* gets straight to the point when explaining how he ended up where he is.
"I've had a bit of a bad upbringing," the now 15-year-old says.
"When I was six, I was sexually assaulted. It happened for a few years.
"When I was 12, I got the balls to tell someone and I told authorities, police."
But Greg's childhood trauma sent him spiralling into a pattern of truancy and disruptive behaviour.
"After I hit year 7, high school kind of ruined me a little bit," he says.
"I started smoking and wagging school with my mates, then it got a bit more intense, like me staying out all night and not telling my parents where I am."
Greg is one of 10 teenagers enrolled in a program supported by ACT Policing, which is helping children re-engage with school.
It's called Project 180, or P180, run by Canberra Police Community Youth Club (PCYC). As its name suggests, the project encourages teenagers to turn their lives around.
P180 is run out of the PCYC's offices at Fairbairn near Canberra's airport, in a former air force hospital built during World War II.
The "classroom" is casual and welcoming, and children can play pool or video games in an adjoining room in their downtime.
PCYC executive director Stephen Imrie says some of the students haven't been to a regular school for years.
"There's a lot of undealt-with trauma or a current crisis that's on their mind rather than maths," Mr Imrie says.
"A lot of them haven't been to school for significant periods of time for one reason or another — it could've been crippling anxiety or behavioural issues that couldn't be managed.
"Some of the abuse and neglect and hell that these kids have been through — you wouldn't believe it.
"I think there's a lot of things that go on and the stories are untold, and that of course is going to have a significant effect on their self-worth."
But Mr Imrie says PCYC staff and families have seen some radical transformations.
"We see a massive change in these kids in the 20 weeks they're in the P180 program — from kids who will come in literally hiding in their own hoodies, not making eye contact with our workers, with their peers here, transforming into young people who are proud to be themselves," he says.
"To be able to see that they are valued, that they are worthy, that they can achieve things in their lives, and — despite what people think of them, despite how many times they get beaten down — they can get up and make a go of it for themselves."
Mr Imrie says many attendees, like Greg, have had a traumatic start to life: drug and alcohol addiction, family violence, mental illness and trouble with the law.
"Most of them have been on the radar with the [police], either for things that they've done or for situations they've been in that have been unsafe or untenable," he says.
The P180 program began six years ago, with funding from the police, to try to bring troubled teenagers back from the brink.
It's a unique program, blending vocational training with life skills, such as courses on respectful relationships and violence prevention.
For students like Ruby*, the 20-week course has been transformational.
"It's for kids who need opportunity, to start their lives again," the 14-year-old says.
"I did struggle a lot as a kid — I was very left out because I wasn't one of those kids who learnt a lot.
"I did have a lot of friends, so that wasn't the issue, but ... teachers didn't listen to me if I needed help, they just kind of left me out."
Mr Imrie says that's the biggest hurdle these children face in mainstream schools: teachers aren't resourced to deal with the students who require the most attention.
"I think there are extremely large loads put onto the teachers today — they almost have to be a social worker as well as a teacher — and maybe that's not what they signed up for," he says.
"Kids are a different breed from 10 years ago, 20 years ago.
"What we would like to see is more support for teachers from the community sector, people who understand the psychology of these kids."
P180 runs on a skeleton staff, but its small classes mean it has a high teacher-student ratio.
But with 40 children on a growing waiting list, its resources are stretched.
At the end of the 20-week program, the PCYC hopes the teenagers will return to regular classrooms to continue their studies.
Ruby says she intends to do just that.
"I want to go back to school, and finish year 10 and year 12, maybe go to university."
But some of these students will never return to school. Some are desperate for financial independence to break cycles of violence, crime or low self-esteem.
So the PCYC offers them jobs through two social enterprises: a gardening business and a mobile cafe.
One of those whose future lies outside the classroom is recent P180 graduate Bam Bracken.
"I've never really engaged well at school, never liked it, used to get bullied a lot in primary school and that," Bam says.
"I kind of dropped out — I went, but only once every couple of weeks.
"But working with PCYC, doing programs with them, has helped a lot."
Bam is now pouring coffee and flipping burgers at the PCYC's Cruising Cafe, parked alongside the Lovett Tower in Woden town centre.
The work puts money in his pocket but also allows him to dream of a career that would have been out of the question just a few years ago.
"I would love to be a chef on a cruise ship, because I've always wanted to travel and I love cooking," he says.
"I've wanted to be a chef since I was little. So [that's] two things that I'd love to do."
Like Bam, Greg says Project 180 has made a world of difference to his outlook on life and work.
"I'd like to be an electrician or a bricklayer," the 15-year-old says.
"This program has straightened me up, put me on the straight and narrow.
"I've been on a life rollercoaster and, right now, I feel like I'm going up and up and up, and I'm not going to come down, so I feel good.
"This has changed me, this program."
* These names were changed to protect the individuals' privacy.
