Mum’s campaign to get life saving bleed kits into UK schools

In 2017, my son Daniel Baird was stabbed and murdered outside The Forge Tavern in Digbeth, Birmingham and it saddens me that I can’t say that the knife crime statistics have improved since then. It seems like a week doesn’t go by without me hearing of another young life lost in the news.

When we lost Dan, my other son Thomas, who is a qualified doctor said that he could have saved Dan’s life if he had been there with his medical kit. It was at that point I knew we needed to do something to stop lives being needlessly lost.

I established The Daniel Baird Foundation and we worked with West Midlands Ambulance Service and the National Trauma Network to develop bleed control kits that could be used by the public to control a severe bleed. 

If you didn’t know, a person suffering a serious injury can bleed out and die in as little as three minutes.

At that time, I couldn’t have imagined where our journey would lead. While the driver for the easy-to-use emergency medical equipment was violent crime, before too long the kits were being praised by ambulance services for their effectiveness in a whole host of situations. Now they are standard across many businesses, such as construction and on public trains, and being used to treat all sorts of injuries.

Recently an elderly man was treated with a kit for a head wound after falling. Also, a young boy in Bristol called Ralfie gashed his knee open, severing an artery, while playing out and luckily, he was close to a ju-jitsu club who had a publicly accessible bleed control cabinet installed outside their premises. Hearing these positive stories push the Foundation to do more, and I was especially happy to meet young Ralfie and talk to BBC Breakfast about his story and the Foundation’s work. 

It’s also not that long ago when someone armed with a knife critically injured a member of the public in Bristol and it was the chest seal device in a nearby Daniel Baird Foundation bleed control kit that saved the person’s life. And in Wolverhampton, just five days after a kit was donated to St Peter’s Collegiate Academy, a teenager was stabbed on the same road and school staff acted fast. Sadly, there wasn’t a kit on the bus in Woolwich to help Kelyan Bokassa or one at All Saints Catholic High in Sheffield to treat Harvey Willgoose, or one close by to save 12-year-old Leo Ross in Birmingham. We still have a lot of work to do.

Thankfully – in lieu of significant central government intervention – community non-profits, individuals, local businesses, local authorities, schools and emergency services are joining forces in all parts of the UK to do what they can. But why can’t our country’s leaders commit to action? 

It was back in May 2018 when I first visited the Home Office and urged then Home Office minister, Victoria Atkins, to help raise awareness of emergency bleed control kits and to include emergency medical training on the curriculum. In September 2024, I was invited to 10 Downing Street for the launch of the Coalition to Tackle Knife Crime by Kier Starmer and Idris Elba. In the period between I have spoken to numerous MPs, lobbied, lettered and even begged. The topic is still not on the PHSE syllabus. 

To put our fight into context, it was only in 2023 when all state schools received a defibrillator from the government. The campaign to make this happen by The Oliver King Foundation began in 2012, after 12-year-old Oliver died from Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome, a hidden heart condition which is estimated to kill 270 children a year. It took 11 years.

Despite all The Daniel Baird Foundation’s best efforts, the government didn’t see fit to provide bleed control kits to schools at the same time as it rolled out defibrillators. And so far, the topic hasn’t been added to the curriculum, even though young people are far more likely to come across a catastrophic bleed injury than they are a cardiac arrest. I guarantee we will continue banging at the government’s door to demand policy changes, but until we see that pledge, I’m afraid it’s down to us. 

I hope after reading this you will be inspired to write to your education leaders and MPs to ask for changes to the curriculum and for the legal provision of bleed control kits in schools. The more it’s spoken about, the more likely we will be to succeed. 

I may have even moved you to buy a kit for your school, but we understand that budgets across education are tight. If this is the case, then you’ll be encouraged to hear that some of the biggest successes we’ve seen is when people come together. For example, various police forces, violence reduction units and ambulance services have placed orders of 100 plus kits at a time and they donate these to schools, retailers, pubs and install them in dedicated publicly accessible cabinets. For example, St Cuthbert Catholic School in Birmingham was donated a kit by West Midlands Police quite recently. When registered, it means any 999 callers can be directed to their closest kit and if in a locked cabinet, the code will be given out. You may want to reach out to your local police force and register your school’s interest to have a cabinet on the school’s exterior. 

What we also see is schools fundraising within their communities, resulting in the installation of one or more cabinets that are accessible 24-7 for local people, as well as having multiple kits for inside the school’s premises. I’ve heard of generous local businesses making large donations, parish councils getting involved, individuals making contributions and even primary school children offering up pocket money change!

When people realise that a couple of pounds from everyone means a life in their community could be saved, they wonder why they didn’t do it sooner. If any schools would like to crowdfund for bleed control kits, then we have put together a pack to help them do this which includes posters and digital content. People can visit the blog at www.turtlemedical.co.uk for more information. 

Of course, there are several schools and PTAs around the country that have chosen to use their funding to purchase bleed control kits and external cabinets to house them in. Kits and cabinets can be ordered online or if you want them branded with the school badge, just call or email our partner Turtle Medical. Some schools that have recently purchased kits are Campion School in Leamington Spa, Busill Jones Primary School in Bloxwich and Prestlands School in Limington – thank you to these schools and to everyone who supports The Daniel Baird Foundation.

I’d like to also thank the many other non-profits and individuals who have supported us over the years, and are themselves committed to a range of goals, from taking knives off the streets to focusing on emergency medical training and getting more bleed control kits in public places. In the last month, a lady from Halesowen who was so moved by Leo Ross’ death asked her business customers for donations and she’s placed 23 bleed control kits in schools.And the number keeps going up. I would urge you to research those in your local area and support them however you can – many go into schools and communities to deliver impactful talks and training.

Daniel’s legacy and the power of collaboration has already saved countless lives. Together we can save more.