Parents come together in fight to tackle knife crime in Bury

The session was held at the Victoria Community and Youth Centre on Thursday evening, which was also attended by police.

Parents worried about the rise of knife crime among young people attended and they were given advice to help them understand how to protect their children.

The workshop was organised by Dean Hamer, who works at the youth centre, and was held by Roy Thickett and Graham Holroyd, who work with young offenders.

The session came after recent knife attacks have been reported in Bury including the murder of 16-year-old Abdikarim Abdalla Ahmed, a 24-year-old man was stabbed after a "disturbance" on Bolton Street, in what was described as a "20-man brawl" and a reported stabbing on April 1, near to Haymarket Street.

Mr Thickett said: “The idea is that parents understand knife crime a bit more, why young people carry knives and how they can have that conversation with a child and then what support they can offer.

"We also do workshops with younger people which is slightly different as well.

“The idea isn’t to scare people because that doesn’t work, it’s about making people aware that they can make an informed choice.”

The workshop also included interactive elements like parents getting into groups and thinking about why young people carry knives and what effects it can have on them and the people around them.

Stab victim Karl Power spoke about his terrifying and how knife crime affected him and his family and how it still does 26 years on.

He said: “I’d been out one day and said I would pick up my girlfriend at a nursery where she worked, I pulled over to use a phone box to say I was stuck in traffic.

“The phone box door opened and these youths with masks on pulled out big knives and just started hacking at both my legs in a phone box.

"This was at 3.30pm in broad daylight.

“The ripple effect that had that day was massive, my mum had to take time off work and my girlfriend was pregnant at the time.

"On the day I lost four pints of blood, the paramedics wrapped me up in tin foil and took me to hospital.

“My sciatic nerve had been chopped completely and my mental health suffered a lot. I started drinking, I was scared to go out, I went through a bad time with depression where I threatened suicide.

"The trauma by girlfriend and son went through still affects us to this day, I now can’t play football with my son.

“To me this type of education is a massive part of it, why isn’t this is every school to get kids at a young age knowing about this type of thing? We’re adults but kids should be taught this, but they aren’t.

“I never had a clue why I was stabbed and no one has ever been charged for it.

"I really believe that education in schools is a must.”

The workshop providing some shocking statistics, which signalled how much of a problem knife crime has become and suggested that Manchester is overtaking London.

The workshop hopes that having parents on board with their children will encourage communication and openness between them and for the children to have the confidence to tell their parents if they are involved or see knife crime around them.

PC Rebecca Dickinson from Bury South Police said: “I just thought it was really good to get parents involved.

“I think the awareness of what we learnt in this session and what parents have learnt about what actually constitutes as a crime and consequences of it and the impact that it has, and they can pass that onto their children who can then realise the consequences of committing crime and preventing them from engaging in crime is great.

“It’s great for us to be able to pass onto them about how they can help the police as well as their own children protecting people going forwards as well.

“Knife crime is emerging in Whitefield. I wouldn’t say it’s a big issue but we are doing these sessions and trying to encourage the public to engage with us so we can prevent any major knife crime happening.

"We know that a lot of young people carry knives and that’s what we are trying to prevent.”

One parent, who didn’t wish to be named, said: “I thought the workshop was brilliant, very informative and really interesting. I want to be able to help and know what is going on.

“It is getting worse, and I think regarding this education is power. I think being able to get this out there to make kids aware is so important because kids just think they’re indestructible.

“Things like this are invaluable and I think it will actually help reduce knife crime.

"I think things like this are invaluable and they should be in schools, schools are here saying they help, no they don’t unfortunately, they don’t want to know.

"As soon as it leaves their path, they don’t want to know but if they actually get that knowledge in like this which was brilliant and informative it will help massively.”

Mr Hamer said the group wants parents to be proactive and help stop knife crime from happening.

He said: “It’s not a massive issue yet but we don’t want it to become a massive issue either.

“Although we have (spoken to) parents tonight, we will also be looking at the youth side of it in the future when we start our youth club back up, hopefully in the next couple of weeks.

“We’re really proud of what we are doing here, and we want young people to think about whether a knife is worth years of their life, so I think its really important that we do partake in these things.”