A Keighley teenager has turned his life around by working with police and a local youth project.

Fifteen-year-old Wayne Coll-yer started off on the wrong foot with Keighley Youth Services Officer PC Lee Holmes after he was caught skipping school. But he changed direction and is now sewing up a successful future.

Wayne attends the Russell Street Project, set up in the town to provide vocational training to get unemployed people back to work. He has now mastered stained glass window making, fashion and design, painting and decorating, as well as making strides in first aid, food and hygiene, literacy and numeracy.

A local firm has been so impressed with Wayne's progress that it has provisionally offered him a trainee position in fashion design.

"The Russell Street Project is brilliant," says Wayne. "If Lee hadn't got involved and I hadn't come here I think I would have got into more trouble."

Wayne has made a Pinnochio pattern stained glass window for his baby sister, pillow cases for his grandmother and waistcoats for PC Holmes and Russell Street Project Centre manager Dick Taylor.

PC Holmes says: "I wanted to get Wayne back into education and so he approached the project. At first Wayne wasn't too keen on the numeracy and literacy but now he enjoys it."

His attendance has gone up from virtually nil to 110 per cent! Since I met him he has really turned himself around."

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