THE mother of a teenager who jumped to her death from Accrington’s Arndale Centre says she plans to open a cafe to help people suffering from mental illness.
Dawn Johnson, whose 17-year-old daughter Lauren died last June, is currently trying to find funds to lease a suitable building in the town.
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“We are looking for a cafe environment, there’s one in Accrington at the moment but they need £25,000 up front. Once we have the base our real work will start,” she said.
The Lauren’s Place cafe – echoing the name of the charity set up following her daughter’s death – will be a place for people to feel safe, get help or find out more about mental health and available services.
“It’s about normalising the fear factor. People will be able to come into the cafe for basic support, it will be a community resource to support the local people of Accrington. It will be somewhere people can come in and say ‘I am having a bad day’.
“We are not specialists but we are human and we will support you, it’s that ethos really. With young people in crisis we will let them have a phone to speak to their health co-ordinator, that sort of thing.”
The cafe idea emerged from the Lauren’s Place charity set up by campaigners wanting to make the Arndale centre safe, following a spate of deaths there.
“I never asked for the Lauren’s Place (charity) at the time, I was too busy grieving. Then I said ‘let’s change focus’, we are more about signposting and supporting now, we have a different focus,” said Dawn, who lives with her husband, Ian, in Blackburn Road, Oswaldtwistle.
She has also been liaising with the officer who worked on Lauren’s case to help improve mental health awareness within the police, and promotes mental health first aid courses in the area – which are free of charge and offer basic skills to people aged 14 upwards.
*To mark the anniversary of Lauren’s death, the family will be manning a stall at Accrington Food Festival on June 6, to provide first-hand information and leaflets about mental health. They will also be asking people to write messages to loved ones on helium balloons which will be released in a short ceremony at 7pm.
*For more details, please visit: www.laurens-place.org.uk
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