StreetDoctors: A National Lottery funded charity empowering young people to save lives

Lifesaving skills, lifelong impacts

Street Doctors are empowering lots of young people. Over 13,000 in 2024. And 11,000 already by the end of July 2025.

Why young people? They are often present or first at the scene of an emergency on the streets. A young person reacting, helping in the right way can be the difference between life and death.

Street Doctors empowers young people to gain the confidence and practical skills to act. The resilience to recover from trauma. And the leadership to train their peers, growing impacts across communities.

“The willingness to act”

Fiona Bradshaw,  Learning and Development Manager, Street Doctors, explains how the young people are engaged by more than First Aid.

“Mostly we focus on what to do if someone's bleeding. Obviously, stabbings, things like that, are crazy. So, we teach young people what to do if they witness something like that on the street.”

How? “We keep it simplified. We focus on no equipment, just what’s practical for a young person. One of the things we want to improve with young people is their willingness to act. So, we co-design everything with the young people.”

Insightful, informed, inclusive

Street Doctors works with a range of young people: school-age and older, in different community or sport settings like boxing clubs, and people with different issues such as those involved in the Justice system.

Scarlett Ash,  Learning and Development Coordinator, Street Doctors, summarises the charity’s approach: “We're not there to scare young people. Everything about the way we work is extremely trauma informed. We are just preparing them for what could happen, giving them confidence if they're ever in that situation.”

How? “We have honest conversations. We're exploring things like checking their prior knowledge around how the body works. Do they think there is a safe place to stab on the body? We use lots of different props.”

‘Near-to-peer’ trainers

In some cases, young medics in their early twenties are teaching and mentoring teenagers close to their age, or as Fiona says, “near to peer age.”

In all cases the young people are in safe, expert, hands.

“Our volunteers are trainee doctors, nurses, paramedics. Healthcare professionals that through our training programs are becoming healthcare leaders in their community.”

The volunteers are vital to Street Doctors training as Fiona highlights.

“There's something powerful in having trainee doctors, nurses, paramedics delivering this training. It gives young people a message that these people believe in them enough to be able to do these life-saving skills.”

Innovation is a strength of Street Doctors. Fiona outlines how they are developing their work in 2025.

“What we're still working on is called the ‘Stepwise’ programme: sessions about bleeding, if someone’s knocked out, mental health. But we are developing a new programme: ‘Young Leaders.’ That idea is for young people to teach other young people what they've learned.”

Peer-to-peer training

“In Young Leaders, young people will develop the skills of the same standard as our medical volunteers. They’re mentored by medical volunteers, to talk about the medical side,” Fiona explains.

“And we ask the young people, ‘who do you think needs this knowledge?’ We can support them to go out and share knowledge. The impact of a 16-year-old hearing it from a 17-year-old who's doing it well and confidently – that impact could be mega.”

The elephant in the room: Knife crime

Scarlett joins the dots between today’s context and the Street Doctors mission:

“The public is hearing about knife crime in the press. They know it affects young people. And people are like, ‘how can we solve this problem?’ A huge part of Street Doctor's ethos is we are wanting young people to feel part of the solution.”

For sure, knife crime remains in the news. And National Lottery data reflects the trend: over the first 15 years of National Lottery funding an average of one project per year cited knife crime. In the 15 years since 2009, it’s an average of 19 such projects per year.

Beyond knife crime, billions have funded funding a massive range of projects and services for young people, for over 30 years, thanks to people playing The National Lottery.

Street Doctors on a mission

The work of this national charity is big picture: it touches on the prevention, the reduction, or the aftermath of knife crime.

“Our main mission is to empower young people to be part of a solution,” says Martin Tilbury, CEO of Street Doctors. “Everything for us is about supporting those young people to be leaders in their community.”

Martin notes how Street Doctors’ work considers the full picture of street violence that young people may experience or witness. “When we talk about violence reduction, it is not just a physical impact. It's also those emotional impacts. How does it affect young people? Their lives, wellbeing.”

In summing up, Martin emphasises how young people are the stars of the story of Street Doctors as well as their communities across the UK.

“Lots of work we do is co-designed with young people, to be effective. We make sure their voice is heard.”

Hear, and read, the words of some of the young people engaged in this video by Street Doctors.