“If you need to speak to someone in here you can, at any time. I feel like everybody should teach the way the staff teach in here.”

In 2021, Ella departed from mainstream education after a few challenging years.

“When I was in secondary school, it just felt like it’s not really about you; they pushed your mental health to the side. It’s about the work and nothing else, and I just felt like it shouldn’t be that way. There was a lot of pressure, so in the end, I just left. I didn’t really know what I was going to do. I didn’t want to go back into education, and I didn’t know that there were things like this here at Carline.”

Ella completed and passed her junior certificate with flying colours and is now looking to pursue a career in acting.

“Yeah, everybody was shocked that I passed because I’m a negative person. I always just say, ah well, I dropped out of school so there’s no way I can pass. Then I came here, did the junior cert, and I passed.”