294 - Let the youth live (Part 4a)
School exclusions, child exploitation, grooming, county lines and how to create positive change
The fourth and final part of our serialised interview with Lisa aka DJ Sweet Li from anti youth violence campaign Let The Youth Live. This fourth part is split into two sections, the second part will cover the policy of Stop and search.
Here she gives her personal perspectives on:
School exclusions
Exploitation and grooming
County lines
As well as multiple ways that readers can get involved and be a force for positive change in their community.
(My comments are in brackets. Jeth)
Print version available here at a special low price
School exclusions
(Jeth: What are your thoughts on school exclusions – if they are ended, how instead should these situations be handled?)
Lisa: All children should be entitled to a good education, a safe place to get the support they need to learn, thrive, fulfil their potential and be able to make a positive contribution to society.
Too many children are at risk of exclusions and then the cycle of criminal exploitation and abuse. that follows.
Schools need to offer early help & alternatives to exclusion think it would be great for schools to be offered incentives to keep children in school.
There is a definite link between school exclusions and young people entering the youth justice system -8/10 have been excluded from school.
The situation right now is our kids are being preyed on & groomed on a large scale. Just look how many kids we are seeing going missing kids in certain communities, they turn up & nothings said about what had happened, where they were found, what they were doing there's no mention of what happened.
So many of our youth are being groomed into criminal activity e.g., county lines, drug & sex trafficked and more
Schools need to work with a multiagency approach & do everything they can to safeguard & protect the children in their care.
Presently within the school's environment, the reasons behind a child's behaviour are not properly investigated and instead they are just excluded from school.
Just for kid's law charity is currently in the process of asking the department of education to make some changes to existing guidance. This is aimed to prompt the school to look at what might be happening in that child's life to look at their safeguarding duties and to look into all other options before excluding a child. Which is great news, and hopefully will be something in place in the next few months.
Exploitation and grooming
This could help break the existing cycle of being exploited if a school can enable a child to stay in a safe environment and being able to benefit from opportunities there.
A child who is vulnerable with additional needs would be easier to manipulate, also if they've already got family members who are involved in gangs or if they live in a gang hotspot.
A child is more likely to be exploited outside of mainstream school e.g., PRU- this is the alternative education they would be placed in after being excluded & exploiters are known to target these children here a lot, in fact I've heard they queue up waiting for them.
When a child has been excluded school, they would feel rejected & unwanted, a groomer would use these feelings to prey on those children knowing full well they won't reach out for support from any professionals as these children have no trust of the services that are meant to be protecting them
By schools excluding pupils they are perpetuating the violent crime cycle so it’s necessary we get change
There are 14 different types of school which i leant about on my Parent champion Training workshop and for a lot of them it's about business e.g., academies.
If schools could just hold off exclusions, it would make so much difference, as it's a known fact that there is a school to prison pipeline, it's a set up for the youth in society.
There seems to be an over-the-top application of behaviour policies in school for trivial matters, poor communication between schools & parents & lots of missed opportunities. This has to change and now.
When any decisions are being made with regards to exclusions headteachers & governing bodies are to follow a set process, but this is out of date as no mention in it at all of child criminal exploitation and any support set out for headteachers at all.
There is no legal safeguard in place for any school exclusions linked to criminal exclusions which means that children can be forced to leave school for behaviour that directly resulted from being exploited.
In the criminal court a young person does have this defence but at present there is no equivalent in the education system. Even though the home office has given schools the information, there is nothing in place within school exclusion policy which is actually so shocking imagine how many children have been excluded for behaviour directly resulting from their exploitation or trafficking which then increases their vulnerability & further exploitation.
The warning signs are there but don't seem to be getting investigated or even understood by the teachers headteachers or governors. instead, they're being kicked out of school and pushed into exploiters hands 1-10 children in gangs.
They are here out just waiting to make money off our children no matter the cost to their lives. We got groomer's out here engineering a child's exclusions, coercing them to carry drugs or weapons into school knowing when they get caught what the outcome will be - exclusion. There are so many people out here preying on our children. If they're not in school what else are they doing, making it a lot easier to be groomed.
County Lines
Drug dealing has always been here but what's was new is them using our children for county lines. Someone is going to find your child if they're not in school.
A groomer will buy them trainers' food etc all gifts are at a price as they now owe the groomer.
If the child has special needs and/or is a looked after child within the care system, they seem to be at a much higher risk from exploitation.
School has a massive part to play in protecting our young people. The reality is that a lot of schools are in denial regarding the realities of what's going on.
if anyone is facing these issues there's a school exclusions hub an online toolbox advice on www.justforkidslaw.org & other community organisations who can help provide support to families facing exclusions across the UK.
Nationwide bleed control campaign
(Jeth: Please tell us about the Bleed kit campaign – how does this system work? What are the costs?)
Lisa: The Nationwide bleed control campaign was started in 2017 by Lynne Baird after losing her son Daniel who had been stabbed in the chest outside a pub and catastrophically bled to death, not making it to the hospital which was only a few minutes away. Lynne discovered there had been no first aid kit and also nothing available to stem the flow of bleeding inside the pub.
Lynne just couldn't understand how her beautiful son Daniel had died like that, one stab wound to his chest, he was a fit & healthy young man. She researched into Bleed Control and various kits, at this time kits could only be found in America, and she spent a lot of time looking into the different types of kits and worked with the West Ambulance service to come up with a specific kit that could be authorised by all The Ambulance services, be part of their agreements and logged on their systems. Well Done Lynne,
Thankfully all those years ago after lots of meetings, one kit was agreed on & authorised. The Daniel Baird Public Accessible Bleed Control Kit.
Around this time i was involved in a Nationwide Campaign-Your City Says No to Serious Youth Violence where 53 cities and towns came out on the same day & time to stand up & say no.
It was while taking part this campaign that i found out about Lynne & The Daniel Baird Foundation.
I too had realised that the youth were literally bleeding to death on the street & not making it to the hospital and wanted to know what could be done to stop the bleeding.
I had been researching myself into bleed control kits a guy I had connected with had told me he could do me 100 kits at 1.50 each including personalisation these were endorsed by a police commissioner as well. I contact Lynne to ask her about these kits' id been offered and for more info about her kits and her campaign. I discovered that the kits I’d been offered literally had nothing in them and wouldn't have saved anyone's life which is pretty scary.
It was after this I joined forces with Lynne & have been working with her on this Bleed Control campaign ever since.
The Daniel Baird Bleed Control kit designed to prevent catastrophic blood loss following trauma or violence and to help control & stop severe bleeding while waiting for the paramedics to arrive. The kit is a vital lifesaving piece of kit which can be used by first responders or bystanders at the scene and contains an emergency bleed control kit which has the same quality equipment as is found on an ambulance, such as haemostat dressings, gloves, a tourniquet and a chest seal.
Each kit is logged with the Ambulance Service. Accessible 24hrs a day, the cabinet is accessed by a code provided by the emergency services. No training is required as simple to use and the emergency services will talk the user through every step of the way.
The life or death timeline
In London it takes an ambulance an average of seven minutes to get to the scene of a major emergency; Bleeding from trauma injuries can prove fatal in three to five minutes so these kits are vital to anyone with a catastrophic bleed e.g., stabbing, gunshot wound, road traffic accident, workplace accident in an emergency to keep them alive until the ambulance arrives.
Even more concerning it can take over 20 mins for an ambulance to reach rural locations where the risk of serious injury from agricultural machinery, road traffic accidents and domestic accidents is further elevated.
They are a vital tool in saving lives, they should already be a legal requirement which we are working on at the moment. The process is very long so in the meantime we are working with others to get these kits into every town & city across the UK. Empowering communities to save lives now.
We installed the very first in a London Community Bleed Control Cabinet last September 2021 and are working on getting many more installed across London and furthermore, Nationwide. These Publicly accessible 24/7 Bleed Control cabinets with onboard Daniel Baird Bleed Control kits were designed by Turtle Engineering a couple of years back (which can also include a defibrillator) these are vital in bridging the gap even more and ensuring even more people do not bleed to death on the street.
We provide community training sessions to use bleed control kits even though they are very simple to use but also train people to know what to do if you have no kit available.
We are very proud to be working in collaboration with Lynne at The Daniel Baird Foundation who trail-blazed the need for accessible bleed control kits/cabinets in large cities throughout the UK. We want to raise awareness for the Nationwide Campaign as well as donations for Let The Youth Lives London Communities Campaign Go Fund Me so we can purchase more cabinets / kits for the community
(Jeth: How Much Do They Cost?)
Lisa: Portable Bleed Control Kits cost £80 excluding VAT.
Cabinets with onboard bleed control kits cost £500 fully installed.
The cabinet, with emergency bleed control kit and a public access defibrillator inside costs £1200+vat
For more information please contact:
Mike at Turtle Engineering Ltd, 01327 22 07 22 www.turtledefibcabinets.co.uk or
Lynne at Daniel Baird Foundation, 07594 170 341, www.controlthebleed.org.uk
Get involved
(Jeth: How can people get involved and best support Let The Youth Live?)
Lisa: please sign & share our life saving petition at change.org as we're demanding that an emergency COBRA Meeting is called to change laws in a matter of days and for life saving initiatives to be implemented immediately.
We would really appreciate if you can share or/and donate to our Bleed Control London Communities Campaign Go Fund me
Let us know where a bouts you are located we would love for you to get involved in the Nationwide Bleed Control campaign to make sure your communities have bleed control.
A lot of people are fundraising, clubbing together with their neighbours to pay for a kit for a local shop, doing their own go fund me, crowd funding etc.
These kits do save lives we need them everywhere and it's going to take as many of us as possible getting involved.
Please follow us on our social platforms @lettheyouthlive, www.lettheyouthlive.com
.We would love you to join us on our weekly Instagram live podcast, get involved in the conversation & action. Check out our previous podcasts on Spotify & apple podcasts & leave us a review we would really appreciate that.
Subscribe to our you tube channel Let The Youth Live
Let us know of any exceptional people / organisations working to save lives in the UK so we can promote what they're doing.
We have been running an initiative called Make Noise End Knife Crime similar to when we clapped for the NHS, but this is for the lives lost to knife crime and the ones still fighting. This is every Sundays 4pm a few mins of making noise on your doorstep or wherever you are even you beeping your horn in the car be as creative as you want and send us a video clip of you making noise @makenoiseendkniferime on Instagram to demand an emergency meeting with the government for action.
I am also part of an initiative for Southwark South London residents called parent carer champions -which is funded by the mayor of London & The VRU. This consists of free training for parents or carers, workshops on grooming county lines youth justice system, education, mental health and more. To enable parents /carers to help other parents/carers, give them information, advice or point them in the right direction for local services. We also speak at schools & events If this is something you would like to be involved in & you live in Southwark, the next lot of training starts in September.
These sessions are also being funded in various other areas so this may be something you'd be interested in getting involved in or even setting this up in your own areas.
We also do online training sessions as well so even if you are outside of Southwark, you can book in for these sessions.
I would also suggest that you try writing to your local MP with regards to any of these initiatives, or issues we've mentioned that concern you, just to see what response you get & let us know. There's been a few of us doing this for the past year across the UK from different areas & it has been a real eye opener. I got a response from my MP after 9 months to say sorry to hear what you've been experiencing but if you still need my assistance email me again.
We definitely need more people speaking out about the realities of what's going on in their communities so if any of you can do that and send us the footage we will share and add to our campaigns.
Love and more blessings to you I really appreciate you taking the time out to read this interview and for all your comments.
A massive thank you to you Jeth for doing the interview with me and all your help and support.