There are many moments in the Australian film Backtrack Boys that dog lovers will get a kick out of.
Director Catherine Scott’s observational documentary – which premiered last year but airs on Sunday on SBS – follows participants of BackTrack Youth Works, the highly successful program which turns around the lives of at-risk youth by empowering them through education, training and support – with a little help from four-legged friends.
The film’s opening moments capture young men participating in BackTrack’s Paws Up initiative, which pairs each of them with a particular dog. They are shown how to train and handle the dogs gently, performing various tricks and exercises.
The organisation’s founder and chief executive, jackaroo-cum-social-worker Bernie Shakeshaft, says the process is not engineered. “The right dog will pick the right kid,” he says in the film. “The ADHD kid will have the ADHD dog” and “the dog that wants to lay around in the sun all day will be with the chilled-out kid”.
Speaking over the phone having recently returned to the New South Wales town of Armidale (where the program is based) after helping fight bushfires, Shakeshaft elaborates.
“It’s amazing when you see that – the dogs selecting kids in that way,” he says. “Some of the dogs are also really good at dealing with trauma. They just know how to pick the right kid out on the right day. It’s great to watch this happen in front of you.”
BackTrack, which was founded in 2006, has three core goals: “keeping kids alive, out of jail, and chasing their hopes and dreams”. Despite receiving little government funding, it has a reported 87% success rate in giving participants (most of whom are Indigenous) either full-time employment or training and education. The initiative has received many accolades, including winning the NSW Youth Service of the Year award in 2015 and in 2018.
For the film, Scott followed participants for more than two years and became “part of the family”, says Shakeshaft.
Scott says it was “no accident” that she was drawn to the subject. “I have a very personal thematic connection, with two little boys, one of whom has ADHD. I struggle to manage them sometimes. It’s not easy.”
One of the featured boys is Russell, aka Rusty. Twelve years old at the time of initial filming, he explains on screen that things started to go wrong for him around the age of nine: “I started sneakin’ out at night, running around the streets, getting picked up by the coppers every night.”
Scott decided to make his journey a key focus.
“Rusty really changes a lot over the progress of the film. He is the funniest kid and we really connected. In just three months I could already see so much change … but it’s never a straight line, these stories. The boys come in, do something bad and fall off.
“Bernie has a wonderful saying: that you’ve got to look for the gold in these kids. You’ve got to look for the good things behind the bad behaviour, because you can always find it.”
When Rusty arrived at BackTrack, he and a great dane connected. It was a perfect match, says Shakeshaft. “[Rusty] came in as a big, tough, mouthy kid, thinking, ‘I’ll get my own way by being physically violent and loud and boisterous.’
“But with a great dane, well, go and push this dog around like you think you can push other people around. He soon worked out that being aggressive with a great dane was not a good way to get it to work alongside him.”
Rusty is now employed by BackTrack, undertaking a school-based traineeship in agriculture.
“Is the job finished? Absolutely not,” says Shakeshaft, “but who else would employ him? He’s still got his issues to go through. It’s not a timed program. We don’t kick people out and get another kid. You cannot get kicked out of BackTrack, full stop. We keep going until the job’s done.”
Shakeshaft’s approach is described in the film as “unconventional”; the social worker believes this word is used because “We don’t have to do stupid stuff that other organisations get bogged down in, such as paperwork that says what you can and can’t do.
“You see in the film how many times we give a kid a hug, for example. In many other organisations I’ve worked for, you’d be sacked for doing that. So for some people who are looking from the outside in, they think: that’s very unconventional. I say no, that’s just being a human. Ticking boxes is not changing kids’ lives.”
• BackTrack Boys airs on SBS on Sunday at 8.30pm
