Settling down among the mats and training equipment, Charlotte Wookey finally felt safe enough to try to sleep.
After fleeing foster care, 15-year-old Charlotte was homeless and even an old shipping container on a rugby pitch was better than being on the streets.
“Worrying about where you’re going to sleep the next night, it was stressful and it didn’t make me happy,” she says. “It was like, ‘oh, this is my life. This kind of sucks’.”
Fast forward 10 years and her life has transformed. Now 25, she has her dream job and has won a prestigious Prince’s Trust Award.
The gong will be presented to her tomorrow night at a ceremony in front of Prince Charles and hosted by Ant and Dec, and aired on ITV this Thursday.
The star-studded affair will feature celebs including former Spice Girl Mel C and Bridgeton star Phoebe Dynevor. Charlotte won the HSBC UK Breakthrough Award, which is for young people who have developed new skills to enable them to make positive steps in facing their challenges and stabilising their lives.
And she has certainly done that.
Following a troubled family background she was put into care and fell in with the wrong crowd, developing a drug addiction and ending up homeless.
But things began to change when she was given a flat when she left foster care and was put on a drug rehabilitation programme.
However, the roof over her head did nothing to shelter her from a spiral of anxiety and depression.
“For a good few years, I shut myself away. The only time I would leave is if I had to go to my drug appointments, or if I had to get food,” Charlotte explains.
“I’d go days without eating, because I wouldn’t want to leave the house.”
Her four dogs – Monkey, Holly, Misty and Lola – who are part-pug, part-chihuahua, were her only comfort.
“If it wasn’t for my dogs, I’m not going to lie, I probably wouldn’t be here.
“They were kind of the reason I had to keep on going,” says Charlotte, of Gwent, South East Wales.
However, during the pandemic she got back in touch with her dad, which helped her start to feel more stable.
Through Jobcentre Plus she was then given the opportunity to take part in the Prince’s Trust as well as doing therapy.
Her confidence grew, and she began volunteering at an animal shelter, which led to her securing her job at a doggy day care.
Charlotte cried when she got the role.
“I was on my way to the Jobcentre and so I was walking down the canal and I was just sobbing. I was ecstatic, over the moon.”
She has now been working there five months and has already moved up to the role of supervisor.
“I’m looking towards the future,” she says. “I’m dreaming of owning my own business. It’s crazy, it’s really emotional and I don’t get emotional over anything.”
Britain’s Got Talent judge Alesha Dixon recently visited the centre to tell Charlotte she had won the award.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she says. “It was almost like a dream, so surreal. I thought I was going to wake up any second.
“On my bus to and from work, I find myself looking out the window, thinking about meeting Alesha.
“I’ll shake my head and be like, ‘Well, I’ve got to snap out of this! What’s going on? This is so weird’.”
The Prince’s Trust and TK Maxx & HomeSense Awards is on ITV at 8.30pm on Thursday.
