Beth shortlisted for national Young Scot award

Listening Peers Mentor Beth Catchpole was one of the finalists for the Health and Wellbeing Award at the 2023 Sunday Mail Young Scot Awards for her volunteering at Bridges Project.

The Awards, which took place at the Platform in Glasgow, is an annual celebration of the inspirational contributions and achievements of thousands of young people who have made a difference to communities across Scotland.

Beth’s association with Bridges Project dates back to when she was 16, when she started receiving support from the charity herself. She had had a challenging start to life, experiencing family substance use at a very young age and being taken away from her parents and into foster care.

With the support from Bridges Project, Beth soon managed to overcome her hardship and successfully went through school and college. It also did not take long until she felt she was in a position to use her personal experience to help other young people like herself. When the charity’s Listening Peers service launched in late 2021, Beth was one of the first volunteers to sign up as a Mentor.

Listening Peers, funded by Midlothian and East Lothian Drugs and Alcohol Partnership (MELDAP) and Corra Foundation’s Partnership Drugs Initiative, is a peer mentoring service for and by young people with lived experience of family substance use. In her role as a Peer Mentor, Beth, now 20, regularly meets up with her Mentees on a one-to-one basis to provide them with support, respite and advice on overcoming challenges related to family substance use.

Beth’s nomination for the Health & Wellbeing Award stated that she has ‘excelled’ in her Peer Mentor role. It was mentioned that she engages ‘amazingly well’ with other young people and is willing to support anyone, regardless of how challenging a background they might have. Furthermore, it said that Beth’s proactive mentoring style and steely determination were key factors to her successful track record of supporting young people, with 100% of her Mentees stating that she provides a great mentoring service.

In addition to her volunteering role, Beth secured a paid Inclusion Officer post with the charity Who Cares? Scotland when she was only 19. In this role, she engaged care experienced young people and provided them with activities. Beth, who is from Prestonpans, is currently planning on going back to college to study psychology and aims to work within this field in the future. The nomination mentioned that these are examples of Beth’s strong passion for using her career, experience and skills to help others.

Beth’s nomination concluded:

‘Beth is an amazing role model for other young people. Her personal and professional experiences have turned her into a confident and mentally resilient young woman. Beth is unfazed by and situation and has an incredible capacity to help other young people. She has turned her difficult start in life into something positive by helping other young people with experience of the care system and family substance use.’

Unfortunately, Beth did not take the award home on this occasion. Nevertheless, she had a great time at the Awards Ceremony and made memories which will surely stay with her for a lifetime. Just being shortlisted for this nationwide award was a massive achievement in itself and everyone at Bridges Project could not be prouder of Beth!