Ballymena teen is a real caring champion

Sixteen-year-old Blair Ritchie represented a Hope Centre project in Ballymena which is supported by the Big Lottery Fund and won the Young Carer award at the Daily Mirror’s Youth Achievers’ Ball, where four champion achievers were ultimately recognised.

Now bigger than ever, this party of a lifetime – hosted by MLA Basil McCrea - showed there are many youngsters out there who just need the chance to prove that Northern Ireland’s future is in capable hands.

As a single mum for the past two years, Blair has had to grow up fast. But her main achievement apart from being an excellent mother to little Sophia, is that she has helped her own mother Lynsey, 36, face her debilitating addiction to alcohol and start her long journey to recovery.

And Blair has done all of that while keeping up with her studies and looking after her grandmother who is battling brain cancer.

From the outside Blair’s life certainly appears to have been chaotic, but she was determined that the chaos would stop with her because she wanted a different life for her daughter.

Her first step was to walk into Ballymena’s Family and Addicts Support Group, known as the Hope Centre, and there she found the people who could help her find a path to some stability.

Not only did she find help for herself, but she grew in strength to such a degree that she was able to help her mother find help too and now Lynsey has faced her alcohol demons and has been sober for months.

On Saturday night Blair joined other vulnerable teenagers for the party of a lifetime and her first priority was not to get dancing, it was to stop off in hospital to visit her grandmother.

She said: “I wanted Nanny to see me all done up. She’s very sick and her memory is fading but I wanted to make sure that perhaps one of her last memories would be of me looking all glamorous and happy and on my way to a party to be honoured for living a good life. She was all tears when I walked in but I knew she was proud.”

Blair said she was shocked to receive the award but that looking after her family was just something she had to do.

“I do my best and I have my moments, after all I’m still just a teenager. But you know life is brilliant now. Sophia is happy, Mum and happy and I am happy. And Nanny was really pleased to see me looking all fancy in my dress. She was concerned that I wouldn’t be warm enough but I think the nerves have kept me going,” she said.

“I’ve lived a lot of my life in fear, a lot of time spent in anger and then when I went for help I found everything that I needed. I really feel I’ve got things together now and I’m so happy that Mum has stopped drinking. It makes everything worthwhile.

“It’s upsetting to think back on the past and there are things I’ll have to deal with in years to come, but tonight my life feels perfect. I knew I’d made changes that were very important but it’s only when other people look at you and see what you’ve done, that it really makes sense. It just confirmed to me that I did the right thing. It was hard at the time but every day gets easier.

“I’ll never forget tonight. I will be very proud to tell Sophia what her mummy did when she is old enough to understand and I hope this is something that helps my own mum keep going in the right direction. I want to thank all the people who helped put this party on. It’s been brilliant.” 
All top four young achievers received a week-long European holiday courtesy of sponsors easyJet and Alpharooms, plus a special certificate and cut glass trophy, while the Big Lottery Fund has also announced that it will support the event by offering awards of £1,000 to boost the work of the projects that support each of the four young people.

MLA Basil McCrea said: “These young people give me hope for the future of Northern Ireland. They show great strength of character, resilience and a desire to make their world a better place to live. I was delighted to host the ball in the hall on Saturday and know that these teenagers were in a group of 400 other young people whose examples in life are simply inspirational”.