Project Lifeline

21/06/2026

Keir Starmer sat on This Morning this week.

Emotional. Passionate. Referencing his own 17 year old son. Meeting Henry Nowak’s father, his mother, his stepmother. Saying he *”felt very strongly as a human being.”*

I watched it. And I felt something too.

Not comfort. **Rage.**

Because I have never once seen this Prime Minister sit on national television and speak this way about a Black child lost to knife crime in London.

Not about Kelyan Bokassa. 14 years old. Stabbed to death on a London bus in broad daylight.

Not about Daèjaun Campbell. 15 years old. Stabbed to death on a residential street on a Sunday afternoon.

Not about any of the dozens of young Black lives lost on London’s streets in the last four years.

I’m not taking anything away from Henry Nowak or his family. That loss is real. That pain deserves to be heard.

But Prime Minister — you talked about forces tearing this country apart.

**You are one of those forces.**

Not because of what you said. Because of what you have never said.

Where were you when their mothers were burying them? When did you last sit on that sofa and say you felt very strongly as a human being about any of them?

In the very same week you sat on that sofa — a 17 year old boy lost his life in Battersea. Miles from your front door. Same age as your son.

When are you visiting that family Prime Minister?

Are you going on next week to talk about him?

That IS the division. That IS the tearing apart. Not by some shadowy external force — by the choices of whose grief gets a Prime Minister and whose gets silence.

You already know what determines that difference. So does everyone watching.

**You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.**

Mark Rodney — Project Lifeline. Making changes in the most dangerous parts of London since 1996 and still fighting for support for these children suffering from Developmental Epigenetic Stress Syndrome — as explored in *Don’t Judge Me, Help Me* available now.

01/06/2026

Young people are not numbers on a chart.
They are not a percentage in your data.
They are children.
Children born into a world that constantly fails them.
No child is born with trauma.
No child is born wanting to pick up a knife.
Something happened to them first.
A 10 year plan is going to be 10 years too late for thousands of young lives.
Because the prisons are already full.
And so are the cemeteries.
I’ve sat with these kids.
I’ve sat with their mothers.
I’ve looked into the eyes of a child the system had already written off — and I saw someone who just needed someone to stop judging and start helping.
The knife is not the problem.
The knife is the consequence.
Until we start talking honestly about the root cause — about what this world does to a child’s mind when it abandons them — we will keep burying children and calling it crime.
I wrote this book because I refuse to accept that.
Don’t Judge Me, Help Me — out now on Amazon. Link in Bio
You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.

27/05/2026

Don’t judge me. Help me. Every young person swimming in survival mode is saying exactly this. Even when the words coming out of their mouth sound nothing like it.”
Mark Rodney
Don’t Judge Me, Help Me · Out 6 June 2026

Don’t Judge Me, Help Me
Understanding Survival, Trauma and the Power of Guided Recovery

I’m counting down to 6 June 2026 — 10 days until Don’t Judge Me, Help Me is published. Get your copy on Amazon. This book is the result of years working directly with young people at the sharpest end of violence, trauma, and social collapse — and the science that finally helped me understand what I was witnessing. I hope it does the same for you.


10 days. A child in survival mode and a veteran who can’t sleep share the same neurobiology. Don’t Judge Me, Help Me. Out 6 June. 🧵
DontJudgeMeHelpMe TraumaInformed DESS Veterans YouthWork

17/05/2026

Two stabbings. Both survived. £25 million. Prime Minister on scene.
One 25-year-old shot dead at a BBQ in Brixton. Three others shot.
Police response: ring 101.
This is not a coincidence. This is a choice.
The same Commissioner who stood beside the Prime Minister in Golders Green said it is “shameful” that Black boys in London are more likely to be dead by 18 than white boys.
Shameful. His word.
122 young people under 25 were killed by violence in England and Wales last year. Confirmed. ONS. 59 of them children under 16 — rising.
3,782 futures erased. Children who will never be born. Grandchildren. Whole family lines stopped.
If Golders Green is an emergency —
what is this?
We are not saying one community matters more. We are saying every community must matter equally.
Project Lifeline. On the ground for 30 years. Not in a strategy document.
10 years too late. 10 years too long.

08/05/2026

23/04/2026

A 16 year old boy was beaten to death in Feltham YOI 🤬😥

20/04/2026

Some meetings change you. Thursday was one of them.

Project Lifeline was invited to sit down with the team at The Forward Institute. They wanted to know what we do, how we do it, what we need, and how they could support us to keep showing up for our young people.

What happened in that room we weren’t prepared for.
They listened. Not in the way people listen when they’re waiting for their turn to speak. They actually heard us. Every word. Talking about what our young people are really going through — not the sanitised version, the version on the TV, the real version. It was emotional because the reality of what these children are living through is heavy. And saying it out loud in front of people who genuinely feel the weight of that alongside you is something else entirely.
There was no agenda. No politics. Just a group of incredibly genuine, caring people who wanted to understand and wanted to help. That doesn’t happen often. We won’t pretend it does.
It was one of the most productive and inspirational meetings we have ever attended. We left feeling seen, supported and more determined than ever.
To everyone at the Forward Institute — thank you. From all of us, and on behalf of every young person we work with.
To Dr. Errord Jarrett — thank you for setting this up. You have no idea what it means for us and all the children caught up in a world of limited or no support..
Partnership London inspirational Together

How does that feel?