The battle with knife crime and youth violence, where we believe talk is cheap and solutions cost more:

2023: In East London, Newham had the highest number of recorded incidents during this period with 642 incidents, followed by Tower Hamlets with 547 and Hackney with 546 incidents.

In the 12 months leading up to March 2023, 19,083 offenders in England were given disposals for possession of offensive weapons, 18 percent of whom were juveniles aged 10 to 17.

 

Previous surveys conducted by the Crime [1] Survey of England and Wales (CSEW) revealed that 6.5 percent of 10 to 15-year-olds knew someone who carried a knife and 5.7 percent of 16 to 29-year-olds knew someone who carried a knife.

Government research has also showed that hospital admissions for knife related injuries has remained at a consistent level for the past two years.

Between 2022 and 2023, hospitals in England recorded a total of 175 admissions of youths under the age of 16 and 471 for youths between 16-18 as a result of injuries caused by sharp objects.

‘Be Heard As One’ was created years ago in order to change the mindset and attitude of young people. This is because if we challenge the mindset of young people, we can hope for more positive outcomes. As a result, we believe in early intervention. We work alongside Newham Council and West Ham Foundation, in order to offer free workshops to primary schools and secondary schools addressing the signs of grooming, gangs and knife awareness, and also offer mentoring or sign posting young people to other charities. We feel that this is a start to reducing youth violence within our community. Eventually, we will be setting up Saturday schools to fill in the gaps within our school system that our vulnerable young people are falling in by address the issues of poverty (financial literacy), learning difficulties (SEN and SEND), school exclusions and mental health. ‘Prevention is better than the cure’.

Through our mentoring and out reach, we provide the following to our
community:

• Community Engagement
• Pastoral Care

Those that feel it, know it. All our Mentors have direct or in direct life experience in this field, have received training and have been DBS checked.