A foundation set up in the name of a knife crime victim from St Helens has been given a cash boost of over £50,000 by Merseyside Police.
Daniel Fox, a carer with autistic young adults, was 29 when he was stabbed death in 2016 while celebrating a friend’s birthday in St Helens.
The foundation in his name was created by his parents, Lynda and Karl Ashton, along with aunt Dawn Jones, in order to raise awareness of knife crime, particularly among children.
The foundation successfully bid for £56,500 from the police’s Community Cashback Fund, which uses money seized from criminals under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
The foundation goes to schools across Merseyside to educate young people on the dangers and consequences of carrying knives, and aims to ensure no one goes through what they endured.
They plan to use the money to kick-start a primary prevention programme, which uses early intervention delivered to children aged 9-25 in local schools and education establishments about knife crime.
YouTube: Evelyn Edward
Daniel’s aunt Dawn told JMU Journalism: “We want to show young people to make safer, better choices rather than pick up a knife. It’s about making a positive change in our community through education, awareness and publicity. It’s a bespoke sustainable knife crime education programme, which talks about the consequences and the impact of knife crime.
“We had to do a business case for the presentation so all the funding’s been allocated to certain quarters. Our main features at the moment will be to set up a training programme and recruit volunteers and then they can work with us on the programme to get to more schools.
“When we were told we were getting the funding we were overwhelmed.
“We did bid for it a year ago and we weren’t successful, so we did it again this year and we were successful and we were just overwhelmed because that helps us now to be more sustainable and carry on in the future to reach more schools and young people.”