Emeritus Professor Lauchlan Chipman currently at Bond University writes:

“Charles Wheeler has the ability to enable young people who have spiralled down to the pits to genuinely believe in their own worth. In some cases it is a matter or restoring that belief; in others it is giving them something they have never had. This requires extraordinary patience and tact, not least because for most of these people bitter experience has led them to regard trust as a dirty word. In the hard climb back he helps them find skills they never thought were in their power, and talents they never knew they had. This is in no way welfare provision. It is assisting these people away from despair and self-loathing towards a justified confidence in their own worth and in their own power to achieve in the real world, from which they had fled or been driven out. It takes time. It takes money, though what Charles and his team achieve with a budget that can generously be described as frugal is extraordinary. The more that is achieved, the more calls there are on this work.

It is hard to imagine Charles ever saying no—he somehow finds a way. Sadly, he also bears the cost in terms of the toll this must take on any person’s health. Yet when you wonder how he’s going to be able to keep going, he finds the stamina to do even more, simply because it needs to be done, and if he and his people do not do it, chances are no one else will.”

Prof Lauchlan Chipman
Emeritus Professor
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Bond University