Hello Phil,

My name is Stuart Stephens and I am the father of Olly Stephens who had his life taken from him through knife crime.

In the early days, I made contact with Clive with the view of having The Knife Angel in Reading.

This was the spring board for many conversations between Reading Borough Council, Thames Valley Police and youth services within Reading to try and educate our ever-threatened youth.

With the aim of raising awareness around the dangers of carrying a knife, we worked with Panorama for A Social media Murder: Olly’s Story. We are working with Parliament to ensure the Online Safety Bill is passed into law. We are working with Kelly Reid of the Violence Reduction Unit and our youngsters. We have just previewed the Channel 4 Documentary that we have been working on to show the incredibly hard-working and dedicated team that brought Olly’s killers to justice.

Through Olly and what happened to him, we have been lucky enough to have met and worked with some amazing people that are shouting with one voice to try and change the path some of these youngsters take.

We are especially proud  to be apart of the No5 project of getting a permanent welfare mentoring hub for Reading’s youth. We are working through Carly Newman and they in turn are working with the children that will be using this facility to better understand their needs.

We were invited to attended the Slough Knife Angel in honour of Aziz Ansari, a local Slough boy who also tragically had his life taken by a knife.

Slough Borough council, along with local community leaders and Thames valley Police, were able to put together a month’s worth of education packages which involved local mentors and leaders educating over 8,000 children in making good choices and the dangers of carrying a bladed article.

The events around the Angel were very sobering, moving and the focus of conversations that will spark action within the community.

We were humbled to be asked along to show our support for Umar and his family, and the great work that the Knife Angel stimulates.

Prevention will never satisfy an accountants spread sheet but without the amazing work that so many people put onto it, on a daily basis, I feel many more lives would be lost to a knife.

I hope this helps.

Kind regards

Stuart and Amanda Stephens