On the Couch with Duke Harrison-Hunter

In this episode of On the Couch with Biscoes, Alison is joined by Duke Harrison Hunter, founder of Ambassador for Change, to discuss the powerful work he’s doing to educate young people on knife crime, county lines, substance abuse, and serious youth violence.

Drawing on his lived experience, including years of addiction and time spent in prison, Duke shares how he now uses his story to deliver impactful school assemblies and community talks aimed at prevention and early intervention. From primary schools to sixth form students, his sessions focus on behaviours, consequences, resilience, and mental health.

The conversation explores the reality of county lines exploitation, highlighting how young people from any background can be targeted and groomed. Duke explains the warning signs parents should look out for, from sudden behavioural changes to secrecy, multiple phones, and unexplained possessions.

They also discuss the rise in knife crime among young people, why education at an early age is critical, and the long-term consequences that are often overlooked. Duke’s approach is honest, direct, and designed to give young people the knowledge they need to make safer choices.

The episode also highlights how businesses and individuals can support this work through sponsorship, helping fund school visits and ensuring more young people have access to these life‑changing conversations.

A powerful and eye‑opening episode for parents, educators, and businesses looking to make a real difference in their communities.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Bisco's great service, every client, every time. Welcome to On the Couch with Bisco's, your home for honest, unscripted business and community chats brought to you by Bisco's solicitors. We work with all kinds of businesses and organisations for our local community, and we've learned so much from the people behind them. So now we want you to hear from them too, to understand the values, lessons, and experiences that kept them moving. If you're looking for hard-hitting legal content, this isn't the podcast for you. This is a cozy, comfortable space for local people and our best collaborators to have a voice. So grab a cupper and come and join us on the couch. Hi, it's Alison on the couch with Biscoes again. Today on the couch, I've got Duke Harrison Hunter. Duke, thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

You're welcome, Alison, and thanks for asking me, obviously.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Right, so Duke, I uh invited you to come on because I wanted to talk a little bit about what you're currently doing.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Right, so I'm currently the founder of Ambassador for Change. Um, so I'm a motivational speaker and I go into the schools where I tried to go into the schools um to talk on relevant subjects like knife crime, serious youth violence, drugs, alcohol, racism, county lines, um, and my own lived experience as well. But um, so that's what I do.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Okay, so um you mentioned lived experience. So can you are you happy to give us a little bit about your background?

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Sure. Um, in a nutshell, I was an addict for 15, 20 years um using class A drugs. I was incarcerated three times in prison, twice in Bell Marshall, high security prison, and once in the United States, all down to my own behaviour. So I I went through lots of child trauma and abandonment issues, no real role model, um, and just went AWOL from the age of 16.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Okay. So from that, you've obviously turned that into something now very positive of um speaking to young people around going down a path that could could lead them into sort of similar um experiences. Um so your current work that you're doing um involves going into schools to talk about these various issues. So, how how does that look? What what sort of event does that look like?

SPEAKER_02 2:38

So I would reach out to the schools. Um, normally um if the schools have a budget, they would say yes, come in. So I'll normally do assemblies, probably possibly two-year groups, seven and eight. Um, the most popular talk is the behaviours, consequences, and resilience, which is partly my lived experience. And then we talk about gratitude, mental health, and then it's all about them after that. That's the most um sought after one. But it's it's normally assemblies that I do.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Uh and what sort of age of children?

SPEAKER_02 3:08

Um, it can start from primary, year six.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Um, and what I'm finding out is that a lot of these primary schools are asking me to come in and do talks around racism.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Um so that's happening a lot in the primary schools, so year six right up to year 13.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

And um the the work that you do um around talking about county lines, and can you just explain to us what county lines mean? Some people may not understand that term. What does it what does it mean?

SPEAKER_02 3:35

So county lines is a form of um exploitation. So drug dealers will pick a county, they will have a phone line, which um then they'll have different uh drug sellers. So the user will then call this line, uh the main drug dealer will call the other line of the drug dealer and tell him where to go. So basically, they're exploiting young people to sell drugs up and down the country, sometimes putting them in trap houses, which are uh houses that are used to bag and sell drugs, sometimes houses that are cocooders.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Now, for lots of people listening to this, they're gonna think, well, this isn't this isn't gonna touch me, this isn't part of my life. Um, we don't have anybody in the family that's been involved with drugs. Um, but what's the actual reality of this?

SPEAKER_02 4:28

The actual reality is that the exploiters out there are so clever. Um, regardless of how much money you have, how big your house is, and how pretty your car is, your child is still vulnerable to these exploiters and they are so clever. Um, and they will start grooming you, and the grooming process could take three to four months trying to befriend you and give you the attention and make you feel wanted. Don't listen to your parents, come with me. And then all of a sudden, they're asked to do favours. And once they start doing the favours, they're in, they're trapped.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Okay, so because you and I have talked about this because um, in my background as a care and adoption lawyer for 20 years, um I came across a couple of instances of young women, particularly um being groomed by um county lion's gangs, um, and they were an unusual um demographic for my type of work, yeah, in that they came from middle class families, um, working parents who were you know doing respectable, good jobs. You know, I think I think one guy was in the army, one mum was a midwife at uh at QA. Um, and they they're basically their their daughters were um befriended by young men who they thought were their boyfriends, um gifted lots of stuff taken away on trips, um, and eventually got very, very hooked into some really, really dangerous behaviour. Um to the point that when when social services got involved, that meant moving those those girls out of the county to get them away from from these gangs, banging, banning social media and phones and stuff to to basically re-educate them about what that had been about. Now, um, I think from my perspective, that was a little bit of a shock to me, having done that work. So, so what you're doing is you're going into schools and talking to parents and explaining to them the the signs to look for if this might be happening. So, what what sort of signs would parents look for?

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Um, you'd look for when your young person comes home, goes straight to their room, they don't talk, may have two phones, their language changes, their behaviour changes, they start getting a little bit like cheeky, or carrying loads of money, or different clothes. Say now my friend got it for me. Um all those little triggers, um, coming on with rail tickets, not letting you know where they're going, all of those different signs like amounts to this young person's up to something. And they don't speak to their parents.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

No, and when you try to speak to them, yeah, they're all that that was very um apparent in the case that I was involved in, is the parents suddenly got very didn't you know were made to be distant from the from their daughters, yeah. Um, and you know, just at their wit's end, really, that that they couldn't get across that this was something bad was happening um because these girls were completely and utterly sucked into to these things. Um, so you're doing that for schools. Um now there's going to be a number of schools that can't really afford to pay for you to come in and do that. So, how is that work being funded?

SPEAKER_02 7:37

Um, sometimes some schools can pay, and then sometimes I I have to look for lovely sponsors to help me out. So um I'll do presentations at different organizations. Thank you, Biscoes, um, and then mention that I'm always looking for a sponsor. And what the sponsor will get for it's £350.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

So what the sponsor will get for that is um they will be involved in every single email when I'm talking to the school.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

Once the school have secured a date, I would then let the uh the sponsor will know. And I will then put their logo on my socials, thanking them so much for supporting me. Then I would happily put their logo on my last slide of my presentations, and then I will invite the sponsor down to the event to actually see where their money is going.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Um, and that works really, really well.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Okay, so um, so if if a a parent, a business owner is a parent at a school, um, they could fund you to go in um to their child's school, or if they're a governor at a school, they could maybe do some fundraising to get you to go into the school and and deliver these these talks that you do.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

Yeah, and they can also choose their own school if they want to.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

So if they can't choose a school or find an organisation, I can do that. Uh, because there's lots of organisation. If you say it's funded, I say, yeah, yeah, come in. Yeah, come in, um, so you can find your own organisation as well.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Yeah, brilliant. Um, and and you mentioned knife crime um as being another another thing that you talk about. You can you just tell us a little bit about that? What sort of um uh what sort of talks do you do? What sort of age group? What's what's that all about?

SPEAKER_02 9:14

Well, I'll do I'm a big believer in early, early intervention. Yeah. I'm a big believer in that. So lots of young people are carrying knives for for different reasons, whether it's peer pressure, whether they feel threatened, or whether they just want to look good. Watching videos online, you know, all of these young people are carrying knives, but they don't really understand the consequence of it. Yeah, they think it's for protection, and I'll always say to young people, learn to fight, go to the gym. If someone pulls a knife, I would run myself. As a grown man, I'm not gonna stand there and fight you with a knife, I will run. Yeah, yeah, live another day. Um, so I I try and talk about the consequences of knife crime. I don't glamorise it for a hot second at all. So I will show pictures of jails, I will show pictures of sales, you know, inmates, and this is where you'll end up if you decide to carry a knife. Even carrying a bladed article, I think you can get up to five years just for that.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

And it's it's the lack of understanding about the damage uh not only that they can do to another person, but the damage to their lives in the event that they get involved in something that you know they didn't really give a lot of thought to.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

Yeah, and there are a lot of young people now, uh Alison, a lot of young people who are in jail right now, teenagers looking at big sentences for carrying these Rambo knives and attacking people. Yeah, lives are gone, lives are finished. Looking at five, ten years. Yeah, these guys are 17.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Absolutely. So, so um again, just remind us if if we and somebody listening wants to uh have you engaged with their school or their youth group or um any organisation, how how would they get in touch with you and um organise that with you?

SPEAKER_02 10:59

Okay, so you can always reach me on LinkedIn, you can always send me a direct message, or you can email me at duke at ambassador.co.uk.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

And we'll make sure that when we uh we publicize this out, that that address can uh can be added so that anybody listening who would like to sponsor an event um for you to come and talk to uh a group um can get in touch with you. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Thank you, Jake.