HE was born to a heroin-addicted mother and taken into care at the age of five.

After seven different foster homes, Bradley Noon spent his formative years in a residential school.

When he was 12, the story of his fractured life featured in a television documentary, The Boys of Ballikinrain, in which cameras were given access to Ballikinrain School, near Balfron, in Stirlingshire.

Now 18, Mr Noon, from Sighthill in Glasgow, has embarked on a journey to reflect on his care-home upbringing. It has been captured as part of a new BBC Scotland documentary Warriors: Revisiting the Boys of Ballikinrain, by Saltire Films.

In the first film Mr Noon and five other boys were followed over eight months. The follow-up sees him visit those friends who are not currently in prison and return to Ballikinrain to ask why more help was not given to the boys before they left.

Mr Noon got a second chance at 13 when his father took him to live in Southampton. But their relationship soured when Mr Noon began truanting and getting into fights.

At 15, Mr Noon was homeless and amassed a criminal record including burglary, grievous bodily harm, being caught with a knife and assaulting a police officer.

"I am the only one of my friends not to have gone to prison – although it was a close call," he said. He has spent the past year turning his life around through his determination not to become another statistic.

For Mr Noon the point of the documentary was to get better support for youngsters like himself once they leave care. Many, he said, find it hard to adapt to life away from the structure of a care home. "I do feel like one of the lucky ones," he said. "If I had stayed in Scotland I don't know what the story would have been. It would certainly have been a lot different. I feel fortunate I wasn't in that environment where there were continuous temptations such as drugs."

Scottish Government statistics show a child who has been through the care system is 13 times more likely to go to prison. Mr Noon met experts including Detective Chief Superintendent John Carnochan, head of the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit at Strathclyde Police, who told him: "If you get brought up in a war zone, you become a warrior."

"If being in care increases your risk of getting in trouble, then the first thing we have to do it fix it," said Mr Carnochan. "There is a recognition it needs to be fixed – we're just not very good at it. If locking people up worked, America would be the safest place in the world."

Mr Noon also spoke to his old head teacher Chris McNaught, who admits the original documentary was a catalyst for changes including improved procedures in helping youngsters get jobs, and offering support after they leave Ballikinrain.

Mr Noon now hopes to join the army and dreams of being a father himself. He said: "We need to take a new approach because if we don't we are going to let hundreds of thousands of youths, through generations to come, go through the care system and end up in prison. That is why Britain is so broken today – and it's only going to get worse."

lWarriors: Revisiting the Boys of Ballikinrain will be shown on BBC One Scotland, 10.35pm, on April 5.