Calls for South Yorkshire A&E staff to be trained to help tackle knife crime

It's after some hospitals in London were given youth workers

Author: Ben BasonPublished 30th Oct 2019

There are calls for South Yorkshire A&E staff to be trained to reach out to stab victims to help tackle the root causes of knife crime.

Some hospitals in London have got youth workers based in emergency departments to work with those who have been targeted, prompting calls for other areas to do the same.

Almost a thousand crimes involving a blade were recorded in South Yorkshire in the year to June - that's a rise from the year before.

Anthony Olaseinde runs the campaign Keep Sheffield Stainless and wants hospitals to play their part in bringing that number down:

"The NHS staff could be trained to ask just simple questions, 'are you scared for your life?'.

"Then the outcome could then be 'ok then this is a serious matter where we feel it is necessary to forward you to a youth worker' and they could come work with that young person."

It comes after the launch of a South Yorkshire Violence Reduction Unit, set up with government funding, to bring agencies together to tackle things like knife crime.

But Anthony thinks not enough services are working together on the issue.

He says reaching out to young people in hospital when they've been stabbed is an idea worth trying:

"If it's a young person they will be feeling very vulnerable, they'll understand the seriousness of what's been happening - as soon as you get stabbed your life is in danger.

"So, I think the best time to catch them is when something violent like that has happened to them.

"That's the time when they will be questioning themselves, they won't be wanting no more trouble and they won't be wanting it to happen again."