Making Hayes Safer is a community safety initiative created in response to persistently high levels of serious youth violence affecting young people and their families in Hayes. The award-winning initiative placed real youth voice and lived-experience mentorship at the absolute heart of its design.
In 2024, the town of Hayes faced increasing rates of serious youth violence, exploitation, and knife-related crimes. To local young people, traditional services felt distant and untrustworthy and data revealed many children were carrying weapons out of fear for survival rather than malicious intent.
The problem also extended beyond physical violence to underlying drivers: trauma, vulnerability, a lack of positive role models and fractured support systems. Surveys captured the reality of local youth:
“I’ve had 10 social workers — no real connection.”
“You can get stabbed and die over a mobile phone.”
Recognising that conventional methods were failing, the London Borough of Hillingdon, funded by the Mayor of London’s Violence Reduction Unit, launched Making Hayes Safer.
Activities and Interventions
Making Hayes Safer delivers targeted mentoring, accredited training, sports, trauma-informed interventions, parenting support, and community engagement. Activities included:
- Targeted school workshops, youth-requested self-defence classes, holidays sports camps.
- Safeguarding training for local residents, faith groups and businesses.
- The reintroduction of a Knife Bin on Pump Lane to take knives off the streets.
- A week-long intensive residential for 15 high-risk boys, including individuals on bail, wearing electronic tags, or vulnerable to gang exploitation, led by Dillon.
The project also employed Dillon Fleming as its lead youth engagement worker and mentor. Excluded from school at age 11 and previously trapped in the justice system, Dillon possessed an authentic reality that traditional services lacked. Dillon co-designed and delivered school workshops that directly engaged 279 young people, aged 11–18, across six local educational hubs. This youth-led approach allowed honest student feedback to directly shape the project’s activities.
Impact and Evaluation
The project has delivered both measurable and lived impact across the community of Hayes, including
- Data verified by the London Borough of Hillingdon and the Adolescent Service Manager confirms a distinct decrease in children being referred to the Youth Justice Service for serious youth violence and knife-related offences.
- Reporting to the Violence Reduction Unit demonstrated a lower intake of children requiring escalations into formal children’s social services.
Making Hayes Safer has proven the power of the youth-led model, with school children explicitly stating they want “more Dillons.” The project is actively seeking an essential funding renewal to prevent closure and ensure this vital, trusted lifesaver becomes a permanent community framework.
