Paul Hannaford’s story is one of addiction, crime, prison, recovery and ultimately using lived experience to help the next generation make better choices.
In this episode of The School Podcast, Paul joins Cameron Parker to share the reality of a life that saw him become involved in drugs and crime from a young age, eventually leading to heroin and crack cocaine addiction and years of destructive choices. Paul estimates that throughout his addiction he spent around £2 million on drugs and came close to losing his life on multiple occasions. But his story didn’t start there.
Watch the full interview on YouTube →
From School Exclusion to Addiction
Paul speaks openly about becoming disengaged from education following difficulties within his family life. By his early teenage years, he was drinking alcohol, smoking cannabis and becoming involved with older young people. He was excluded from mainstream schools, attended a Pupil Referral Unit and became increasingly involved in gangs, drugs and crime. What followed was a journey through prison and serious addiction that would dominate more than two decades of his life.
Today, Paul uses those experiences very differently. After turning his life around and getting clean, he began working with children and young people, sharing the reality of where certain choices can lead.
Are We Preparing Young People for Life Outside School?
One of the most interesting parts of the conversation is Paul’s challenge around education and safeguarding. Schools rightly place huge importance on English, maths, science and academic achievement, but Paul questions whether young people are always given enough education about some of the dangers they could face outside the school gates. This can be drugs, gangs, knife crime, grooming and exploitation.
These are difficult conversations, but for some young people they are also very real ones. Paul believes education around these issues needs to happen early and that simply telling a young person that drugs or carrying a knife is “bad” may not be enough. Young people need to understand the choices and the potential consequences attached to them.
The Power of Lived Experience
The episode also explores the role lived experience can play within schools. Paul can talk about prison because he has been there. He can talk about addiction because he has lived through it. He can talk about the physical consequences because he still carries them. That doesn’t mean lived experience should replace teachers, safeguarding professionals or other experts. But used in the right way, it can add a different voice to an important conversation and potentially reach a young person in a way they haven’t been reached before.
Paul is also clear that he takes responsibility for the decisions he made. His argument isn’t about blaming schools or education for the direction his life took. Instead, it raises an important question:
Could better conversations, earlier intervention and a clearer understanding of consequences help some young people make different choices?
Paul Hannaford’s journey shows just how far those choices can take someone, but also that a person’s past does not have to determine what they do with their future.
Watch the full episode of The School Podcast with Cameron Parker to hear Paul’s story and the wider conversation around drugs, gangs, knife crime, safeguarding and education.
