Children in high knife-crime areas are being taught how to deliver first aid to stab victims, details of the programme emerging less than a week after two teenagers were stabbed to death in separate attacks and a knife gang entered school grounds and threatened pupils.
Run by charity Street Doctors, school children are taught how to deliver first aid to stabbing victims through role play, and learn how to stem blood loss, reports The Times.
The scheme operates in 16 cities across the country including London, where less than 15 per cent of the population live but one-third of all stabbings occur, according to NHS data.
The charity said that they know of 14 cases where their training has helped in an emergency situation faced by youths, in one case in a shooting and seven after a stabbing.
Carl Ward, chief executive of City Learning Trust in Stoke, Staffordshire, told the newspaper that Street Doctors gives training at its secondary schools, explaining, “They come and show you what a knife can do to the body — it makes it very real.
“Children are usually in quite a lot of shock. Stoke on Trent is a tough area with lots of gang problems. We’ve had for a few years to prep the children up so they know what they’re getting into.
“Every child has lessons from StreetDoctors, including how to respond to a stabbing.”
On Monday morning, police were called to Runshaw College in Leyland, Lancashire, after administrators were informed a gang of youths travelling from Manchester, 30 miles away, were intending to enter school grounds bearing knives in what was suspected to have been a “targetted attack.”
Lancashire Police told the Evening Standard, “Officers were deployed and whilst at the college at shortly before 4pm, they have witnessed a group of males walking into the grounds whilst students were leaving.
“Some of the group were seen carrying knives and were making threats towards students.
“A 17-year-old boy was nicked on the arm during the incident and has been taken to Chorley Hospital. His injury is not thought to be serious.”
The group was said to number around 12 and police arrested six males aged 17 to 18, seizing a machete, knives, and crowbars from the suspects who were later bailed with strict conditions.
Later that evening Leyland Police Chief Inspector Gary Crowe said, “We believe this was a targeted attack in that we think the group have gone to find someone, and a separate student has received a minor injury. This was not a random attack.”
On Friday, 17-year-old girl scout Jodie Chesney was stabbed in the back in London while on Saturday, scholarship student at a top private school Yousef Ghaleb Makki , also 17, was stabbed to death in the affluent Greater Manchester village of Hale Barns.
Data analysed by Channel 4 has found that the number of children being treated for stab wounds has nearly doubled in five years, while the number of under-18s committing murder or manslaughter has increased by 77 per cent since 2016.
Police chiefs have called for increased powers to stop and search those suspected of carrying weapons — powers restricted in 2013 by then-Home Secretary Theresa May on grounds that the policing technique was disproportionately used on young, black men.
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