We are scared to leave our homes, teens confess

"I've seen a lot of young teenagers terrorising old people," 16-year-old researcher CJ, from Bristol, said.

She is one of the young people who has either witnessed, been a victim of, or carried out violence, who has been recruited to speak to her peers.

It is an attempt to find ways to build safer communities across the West.

Local children, teenagers and old people "are scared to leave their houses in case they... bump into these young people," CJ said.

She said they were worried they would face mental or physical abuse, if they ran into this group.

"I've seen a lot of young teenagers terrorising old people, local shops and just creating a lot of fuss and bringing drugs in and things like that," she added.

CJ, from Knowle, was on a training day at the charity Young Gloucestershire which is helping to coordinate the conversations locally to look at ways of creating safer communities.

The research from across the West will feed into a national programme by Peer Action Collective.

The talks focus on what the issues and causes are of youth violence and what can be done about it.

Leah, who is 20 and from Gloucester, has been a victim of violence and said it had deeply affected her.

"We obviously can't stop violence completely, but we can at least try and put some things in place to stop it from happening as much as it's happening at the moment," she said.

Her ambition is to become a support worker to help others and she said she was taking part in order to gain potentially useful experience and insights.

Another recruit is 18-year-old Macy from Bristol.

She, along with others from the team, will be going into the community and talking to people about safety and violence in the future.

She said: "Everyone wants to be happy [in their community] and live there and feel safe there.

"At the minute no-one feels safe. No-one wants to let their children out because they are scared of the 'what if these people do this to them?'."

Peer research mentor for Young Gloucestershire, Dana Aboul Hosn, said: "You can truly see the passion in each of the young people that we have on our team.

"They are basing it on personal experience which makes it even more of a reason to look into what we can do to make it safer for them."

"They have previously not felt safe in their communities, so they know first-hand how it feels, and they want to make a change," the mentor added.

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