Fred Campbell is married to Kylie Campbell, the middle sibling in the Bloomfield family. His role at Oonchiumpa is to guide younger employees through case planning and make sure the plans they write will not fail the young people they are designed for.

"It's easy to get them on bail and stuff like that, but with safe plans and actions, I'll make sure that we don't put a plan together where it's gonna fail the young kid itself. And we see them going back and their bail conditions breaching them and they go back into the system."

Fred tells the story of Xavier, one of Oonchiumpa's first clients from three or four years ago. Xavier came to them after every other service provider had distanced themselves. Nobody shared information about his disabilities. Nobody could engage him.

"He's probably one of our first clients. Other service providers did not share anything of his disabilities. We found out along the way. We more or less had that relationship with him. We found that he wanted to be with us a lot. And then we had that great friendship with him and he trusts us. We earned that trust from him. Ideally he just became a little brother to us."

At the start of this year, Xavier was released from youth detention. Since then he has not been back in trouble. He has not been hanging around with the same influences. He is on a good path.

Fred describes the day Xavier helped build the Stretch Beds — recycled plastic beds designed for Aboriginal families who move between locations:

"He knew what he was doing. He had the pattern of how everything was all coming together. He loved it. We took him back to the family and he just was so proud showing them that he can build it."

Xavier did not know he was getting paid for the work. When Fred told him, he asked to go buy shoes.

"He couldn't stop thanking me. The smile on his face all the way back home. He got out showing his family the bag and I think straight away we couldn't find him today. So obviously he's walking around everywhere with those shoes on, running everywhere."

The beds themselves matter. In many of the houses Fred visits, beds are on the ground. In Aboriginal culture, families move — for ceremony, for sorry business, for family obligations. The Stretch Beds can be packed into the back of a car and taken anywhere.

"The families right now, like you see in most of those houses that we went to, the beds were on the ground. It's a safety thing. Some of our kids have come up with scabies and stuff that shed from the dogs. But knowing that they can pack that up, put it away into a tidy small space in the back of a car and use it wherever they can go — that's something they can't do with those other sturdy metal ones."

Fred sees Xavier as someone who could show other young people what is possible:

"I reckon if anything, he'd be probably one of the ideal candidates to go around and show the community, and how to even teach these other younger guys."

For judges, this is what the alternative looks like in practice. Not a program document or a funding application — a young man who was given up on by every other service, who found people who did not give up, who built something with his hands, who bought shoes with money he earned, and who might now teach other kids to do the same.

Trust, responsibility, family, and real tasks. That is what Oonchiumpa offers. The question after the visit is whether the system can make room for it.