It may not seem a likely partnership, but Durham students have teamed up with former drug addicts to teach them sports. Women's Editor Sarah Foster sees the scheme in action.

ON first glance, the dusty sports hall looks deserted, then from a section at the back drift people's voices. I stride towards them with Emma Hall-Craggs, a student placement officer at Durham University, and when we reach the curtained enclave, I see what's going on inside. This is disabled fencing practice, and as I'm told in all politeness, must carry on uninterrupted. It seems the fencers are immersed in locking swords.

What makes this pastime rather different, aside from people being in wheelchairs, is that at least one of their number was once hooked on class A drugs. He's now reformed - not just in this but in abandoning offending - and through his fencing, has gained both confidence and friends. He's part of a pioneering scheme involving student volunteers and, as we leave him to his practice at Durham City's Graham Sports Centre, Emma explains how it all began.

"My job is to get students qualified in different sports and then give them quality placements in the community coaching different sports. That's part of the student experience when they're at Durham," says 35-year-old Emma. "We had a presentation from Government Office North East (GONE) about how they wanted to provide a programme. I think they had piloted a programme with drugs intervention and football at Newcastle University, and I think they wanted to spread that out. We had no students in the community coaching adults, so that was one thing that attracted us."

Durham said it would take part, agreeing to clients being sent to it by GONE. They'd all led problematic lives, with drugs a feature of their pasts, so could potentially be difficult to teach. Was Emma daunted by the prospect? "It was quite a challenge and we had to find special sorts of students," she admits. "We've got a lot of sports students and PGCE (teacher training) students and I think it started as part of creating an experience for them, but one girl is applying for a social work degree and we've got a couple doing theology."

It started slowly, with students teaching clients football in a modest pilot scheme. It may have been a clash of cultures, but Emma says it soon worked out. "We had a head coach who had done quite a lot of coaching before and he was very confident, but the others were all quite new to it, as well as being new to this, so they were all a bit nervous," she says. "But it only took about ten minutes to break the ice and, by the end, everyone knew everyone else by name."

What no doubt helped was that the students didn't patronise, which underlies their coaching ethos. As Emma says, they keep within their limitations. "The students who we get are good at coaching football but they don't pretend to know everything because some of the client group are really good players. I think the bottom line is they all really enjoy it. We don't have any problems."

Since Durham introduced the project, in 2005, it has expanded every year. Now several sports have come online and many clients have been helped. They each have two hours of activity a week. "We aim to run two courses a year - one in term one and one in term two," says Emma. "They come in between 12 and 2 and they have their lunch here and do football or other activities. We do aerobics and try to put different things on for them. We ask them what they want to do."

But does it really make a difference? Has Emma seen the clients change through playing sport? She claims the change in them is marked. "I was just saying last week that the first football group that we started with is playing much more competitive football now and they're much more switched on," she says. "There's much less stopping for cigarette breaks. Honestly, they used to stop for cigarette breaks every five minutes and vomit quite a lot but now it's proper football. With quite a lot of the people you talk to you can speak to them and have a proper conversation, whereas perhaps six months ago you would speak to the same person and not be able to follow the thread of what they were saying."

And if the clients have progressed, it seems the students have as well. Aside from practising their coaching, they've learned to mix with different people. "I think it just gets them out of the students' comfort zone and challenges them a bit," says Emma. "It gives them confidence. I think it helps them realise as well that you don't necessarily need to be from a different background to have a drug addiction, because there's quite a lot of people who have come from the same background as them."

With the success of the arrangement, it's hoped more courses can be run. New groups are starting to come in, like vulnerable women from South Tyneside, and in the future, when more facilities are available, it's planned that youngsters will be coached. "At the moment we have only got over-18s but we will be looking at bringing in a similar sort of programme with 16 to 18-year-olds, which are a notoriously difficult group to work with," says Emma. "We don't really feel we can do that until we've got a bigger facility, and with a bigger facility we would be able to operate more sports."

As we conclude our conversation, a shy young man arrives to give his points of view. He's John Anthony Fothergill, whom I first saw when he was practising his fencing, and he is proof of how the scheme can really help.

The 25-year-old, who comes from Darlington, was once an addict and a criminal. At just 18, he took an overdose, and this resulted in a stroke. He couldn't speak for two years and now is permanently disabled - but since he started with his fencing, he's found new purpose in his life. "I started five months ago or something," he says. "I'd never done it before and I never thought I could do it, but I don't know many people who do it and it's a good opportunity, isn't it? They must think I'm all right because they want me on the team."

Of course there are no easy answers - a couple of hours of sport a week will not transform a person's life, but it at least provides an interest, can help to bolster self-esteem. As John points out in his inimitable way, the scheme has helped him reinvent himself. "Now I'm not in trouble so it's all right," he says. "I'm doing mint."

* The Durham Swordfish Fencing Club for wheelchair users, to which John belongs, is looking for new members. For more information, call Carole Seheult on 07810-810380.