BackTrack is for young people having a hard time.

With a mission to keep kids alive, out of jail and chasing their hopes and dreams, BackTrack works by engaging a community of support, together helping young people to develop healthy foundations for positive life pathways. 

BackTrack provides holistic youth work, education, accommodation, training, employment, and the wraparound support of the BackTrack family to help some of the most vulnerable kids get their lives back on track.  

The young people BackTrack works with are impacted by complex intersecting challenges including disengagement from education, early contact with the criminal justice system, homelessness and housing instability, trauma, multigenerational poverty, unemployment, substance use and severe psychological distress.  
 
Changing lives is a game of inches and BackTrack stands behind these young people for the long haul. Whatever it takes, for as long as it takes.  

BackTrack was established in Armidale, NSW, when founder Bernie Shakeshaft saw vulnerable young people being left behind by a mainstream system that couldn’t meet their complex needs.   

With a shed, a passionate crew of volunteers, a pack of working dogs and a mission to keep kids alive, out of jail and chasing their hopes and dreams, Bernie established BackTrack in 2006. Today, our organisation is nationally recognised for its proven approach to helping vulnerable young people develop work and life skills, participate in learning and training, prepare for employment, and connect with their wider community.

We achieve this through a combination of educational, training, and diversionary activities, transitional employment in our social enterprise (BackTrack Works), home-like accommodation and flexible, wraparound youth work at multiple sites including The Shed and the BackTrack farm.

We also support a growing number of like-minded organisations doing similar work in their own communities via the BackTrack Network. 

Our holistic approach to youth work and the wellbeing of our young people is based on the Circle of Courage concepts of Belonging, Mastery, Independence, and Generosity.

This methodology is founded on the original circle of courage model from First Nations people in Canada and states that for young people to thrive, they need four components in their life to be in balance: belonging, independence, mastery, and generosity.

When young people - and communities and workplaces - have these four quadrants in balance, they can access healing and wellbeing. 

The profound, intergenerational impact of a young person’s involvement in BackTrack is demonstrated in our recent documentary update ‘BackTrack: Chasing Dreams.’

This is a follow up to the 2016 documentary ‘BackTrack Boys’ and both are viewable on our website.

We have impacted the lives of countless young people and influenced how other youth work organisations achieve impact – via wraparound, long term, relationship-based support.

Over recent years we’ve been working on how we can reach more young people and communities across the country, through the sustainable growth of our social enterprise, BackTrack Works, and the BackTrack Network.

In 2023, we embedded a permanent BackTrack operation in Tenterfield, and we are honing out network structure to support more communities.

Our end game is to help as many young people having a hard time as possible; to break the cycle of youth incarceration and multigenerational disadvantage and ensure that every child and young person has a place to turn for holistic, genuine support when things go off the rails.

In line with how we do things at BackTrack, we'll do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to reach these goals.

We are excited to have kicked off a relationship with Coolaroo Foundation as we see such great alignment with our purpose and values.

We seek to empower the most vulnerable young people in regional Australia to help them turn their lives around and become valued contributors in their local communities.

In Armidale, we have demonstrated what is possible when a community gets behind these kids.

Our short-term goal in FY25 is to further shore up our backend systems, staffing and processes in Armidale in preparation for a period of growth in the medium-long term. This has always been the challenge at BackTrack where we are committed to helping as many young people as possible, while never wavering from our wraparound, long-term and often very intensive and complex support for the young people who rely on us. We have begun work on a staff wellbeing framework with a focus on supporting our incredible staff and volunteers in the same holistic way we do for young people – underpinned by our Circle of Courage principles of Belonging, Mastery, Independence and Generosity.

Our new Farm, Cubba Cubbah, is also a focus, with a range of exciting accommodation and infrastructure projects headed towards completion in 2025, we are looking to set an operational plan which positions the farm as the central gathering place and symbol of our intergenerational commitment to young people having a hard time.

Another focus, as we head toward our 20th year in operation, is to celebrate the successes and incredible culture created by our older BackTrack young people, who have been through our programs, and are now in a position to provide leadership across the organisation and into the future. We are looking at ways to champion and embed their voice in everything we do