Father Gregory Boyle began his presentation about how to tackle gang culture with an unexpected message: young people who are affiliated with gangs do not need to be “changed”, he said, speaking to an audience in Royce Hall at the University of California, Los Angeles, in June. What they need is for someone to help them to remember who they are and to give them the tools to reconnect with their inherent goodness.

I knew immediately this was a message that could help my school.

St Francis Xavier College is a Catholic school in Victoria, Australia, with more than 3,000 students attending across three campuses. A small number of our students have been incarcerated and belong to gangs.

Many of these students are South Sudanese, from refugee backgrounds, and have already faced enormous challenges in their lives. After moving to Victoria, they struggle to align themselves with the dominant identities here and turn instead to models from American gang culture, which they see online and on television. As a result, they are making choices that sometimes result in them appearing in court.

Positive and practical

I was watching Boyle speak because he knows more than most about how to support pupils like this. In 2001, he founded Homeboy Industries, an organisation that trains gang members to change the direction of their lives. In addition to providing employment opportunities, Homeboy Industries offers services such as tattoo removal, parenting classes and counselling.

The organisation now supports more than 10,000 former gang members from across Los Angeles each year. Although I doubt that St Francis Xavier will be offering tattoo removal any time soon, the message at the heart of Homeboy Industries - that we must focus on the positives and offer practical support and training - is certainly something that our school could adopt.

There is evidence to back the Homeboy approach. Skills-based programmes - including activities that aim to develop young people’s ability to control their behaviour and participate in prosocial activities - are among the most robustly evaluated and effective approaches to preventing gang involvement and youth violence, according to a 2015 review for the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF), What Works to Prevent Gang Involvement, Youth Violence and Crime (bit.ly/EIFrev).

Interventions that have “therapeutic” principles, meaning they aim to create positive changes in the lives of young people, as well as preventing negative outcomes, have also been shown to be effective.

On the other hand, as the EIF review points out, several studies have found that interventions based on deterrence or discipline are not only ineffective but can actually increase offending.

This is particularly telling. Often the default message that permeates schools is one of “not enough” - of seeing students through a deficit lens, focusing on what they can’t do and punishing them for their mistakes. Instead, Boyle (pictured, left) advocates helping young people to identify their strengths and develop the best parts of themselves.

At St Francis Xavier, we were already working towards the type of “therapeutic” approach advocated by the research. Two and a half years ago, we decided to emphasise positive education. One aspect of this is switching from a deficit focus to looking instead at who students are and what they can do: highlighting their existing strengths. This message is especially poignant for those who are struggling to fit in and connect with others, or who are experiencing academic struggles. We view positive education as a way to help these students to see themselves and each other as already whole.

The Homeboy approach fitted neatly with this by pushing us to make use of those existing skill sets for employment opportunities. Our South Sudanese students, in particular, were finding it hard to get work placements, especially those who had faced charges in court. What if we could create an industry where our students could get the work experience they needed while also being trained in the skills that would help them in their future employment?

Our school already supports students who need to attend court by accompanying them and providing a character reference. We welcome students back after they have made poor choices, but we have always been limited in what we provided in terms of work experience that would help them to develop their confidence and feel valued.

Ending a negative cycle

One of the ways that we are now supporting students who are disengaged from mainstream classroom learning is through a programme to teach bicycle maintenance. We ask the local community to donate bikes that are in need of repair and are no longer wanted. Students are taught how to repair them, and the working bikes are then donated to charitable organisations, such as Bicycles for Humanity.

We are also hoping to form a student-led crew that can volunteer to maintain gardens by making connections with community groups such as Landcare, the Scouts and non-profit care homes.

This is not a simple solution. We face huge challenges in getting such programmes off the ground, as the students who would benefit most do not turn up to school regularly enough to form strong relationships with teachers. We have small interactions with them here and there, but nothing consistent.

There is also the fact that the funding we would require to develop and sustain a public-facing industry is just not available, so our initiatives will have to be very small-scale.

And there’s another issue around how we create these opportunities in school, alongside supporting students who are already achieving success, without stigmatising those who need the extra support.

I’m not sure what the answers to these questions are just yet, but we will learn through doing and find solutions. I am optimistic about our plans. Having one school model that all young people must fit into is no longer working, and we have to be creative about how we try to engage students, even when they are not able to meet us at the school gate.

Joanne Alford is deputy principal - wellbeing at St Francis Xavier College in Beaconsfield, Australia