“How many second chances do these young people get?” is something we all hear a lot about kids tied up in youth justice. My response is always the same: a lot of these young people are still waiting on their first.
Some children grow up with safety, consistency, people who notice when they are struggling, and adults who have the time and resources to understand what they need and to teach them ways of having those needs met appropriately. Others do not.
By the time we meet them, we can be looking at behaviour, diagnoses, school refusal, justice involvement, placement breakdowns, or relationships that are already under enormous pressure. But those things rarely tell the whole story of a person.
At Foundational Minds, I believe good support should combine high quality science with genuine human understanding. That means structured assessment, high quality data, and systematic processes. It also means being curious, compassionate, and willing to look beyond what is immediately visible.
Science matters because people deserve better than guesswork. Data matters because assumptions can be wrong. And compassion matters because behind every behaviour is a human being trying to navigate the world with the skills, experiences, and supports they currently have access to. For some people, the only way they have been taught to communicate is through violence, because that is all they have seen and all they have ever been taught.
I explained my work to my Dad a few years ago by asking him a simple question. When you put the ingredients of a cake mix into the oven, what do you expect to come out at the end? Do you expect a piece of steak? His obvious answer was no, he would expect a cake. Exactly, I said, and human beings are no different. If the ingredients put into a child at a young age are crime, anger, harm, and rejection, how on earth could we expect a well adjusted, functioning human being to come out at the end? It makes no sense.
We may not be able to change someone’s beginning. We can become much better at understanding, and helping to shape, what happens next. Foundational Minds is built on that exact premise.
