North East anti-knife crime campaigner says more needs to be done to tackle knife crime
The Connor Brown Trust say we need more knife crime education in schools
A North East anti-knife crime campaigner is calling on the government to do more to crackdown on knife crime.
It is following an incident earlier this week where a 15-year-old boy died after being stabbed at a school in Sheffield, causing devastation to the community.
Tanya Brown, who set up the Connor Brown Trust in memory of her son, says there needs to be more education in schools around knife crime.
She said: "It's just absolutely heartbreaking. It really just hits home repeatedly about our own feelings and how we understand what this family is going through and the roads and the journey that they’ll now have to endure, it's just absolutely heartbreaking.
"When it comes to education, this just proves the point that we need more education within schools. We are having some difficulties in getting into schools to offer our free workshops because a lot of schools don't want to admit that there could be a problem with knife crime within their schools.
"If any schools out there are offered the opportunity of knife crime workshops from small organisations like us or others that are out there, then they must take them up on this offer because what we deliver is vital, it is real.
"We would like to urge the government to accept that it's small families like us who can deliver knife crime workshops with more impact and support us in the work that we do instead of putting up the barriers. The government needs to start acting instead of just talking.
"Knife crime isn't just about the victim and a perpetrator. It's so much more than that. It does impact on the whole community and this community, where Harvey has lost his life, will be suffering that impact as we speak.
"The whole school community is going to be just totally devastated by what happened and some even probably frightened to go back into school, and it's not going to get any easier anytime soon. It does impact on so many more people than what some people realise. It does have that huge ripple effect."