In light of the worrying spate of serious knife crime incidents - which have led to ChronicleLive's Stop Knives Taking Lives campaign - ambulance service leaders in the North East reflected on how their crews had attended more stabbings recently than ever before.
Speaking at a North East Ambulance Service board meeting last week, outgoing Director of Quality, Patient Safety, Innovation & Improvement Sarah Rushbrooke spoke of how recent months had seen ambulance service staff make a "significantly increased" number of safeguarding referrals. She explained this tied into a range of factors including the rises in child poverty.
But she also spoke of how ambulance crews were often first on the scene of awful incidents like those which have resulted in the deaths of youngsters like Holly Newton, Gordon Gault and Tomasz Olesczak. She said: "We have seen more stabbings than we have ever seen before, especially among young people. And we know our crews are the first at these scenes. They do get mandatory training - and wraparound care for them is really important."
