My Chantelle’s death was not in vain

It brings the anniversary of the sudden death of her daughter Chantelle, above, at the age of just 16, then another Christmas without her. But over the years Pat has developed a way of getting through it.

"I take time alone, go for a walk, or have a massage. I don't think about that terrible day in casualty. I don't think about the fact that if she'd survived she would have had brain damage. I think about Chantelle and what has been achieved in her name," says Pat, left. "The hardest day is her birthday; I wonder what she'd be like now. She'd be 26, maybe married with her own children, and she'd be an auntie as I've got grandchildren now."

Chantelle Bleau was a popular teenager who sang in the church choir, worked hard at school and had ambitions to become a teacher. Keen on performing arts, she had landed a role in a play with an anti-drugs message, something Chantelle felt strongly about.

On December 1, 1997, Chantelle was larking about with friends when they decided to sniff cigarette lighter fuel for a laugh. She collapsed immediately and hours later she was dead.

Her parents Pat and Richard set up the Chantelle Bleau Memorial Fund in her memory, a charity devoted to reducing the number of deaths caused by solvent abuse by raising awareness of the risks.

Initially ill with grief, Pat turned to channelling her energies into creating something positive in Chantelle's memory. She has devoted the years since her death to helping others.

Over the ten years since it was launched, the Bradford-based Chantelle Fund has successfully campaigned for the age limit for buying lighter fuel to be raised from 16 to 18. Focussing on going into schools, it has targeted 42,000 pupils across Bradford district and helps teachers and school nurses recognise and tackle solvent abuse.

The fund has one paid part-time worker and 50 trained volunteers who hold lessons featuring games and quizzes. Pupils are shown a video of Chantelle dancing and of her parents talking about her death.

Since Chantelle's death there hasn't been a single under-18 death from solvent abuse in Bradford, compared with the national rate of one per day and, elsewhere in Yorkshire, between six and ten a year.

As Pat, 53, of Horton Bank Top, reflects on the past decade she's proud of what the charity has achieved and says it has helped her cope with Chantelle's death.

"I think of her every day and of course I wish she was still here, but the way I see it is she has saved countless lives," says Pat. "The great thing about the fund is it's preventative - it takes the message into schools and gets through to children.

"They watch Chantelle's video and identify with her as a normal teenager. So many of them say afterwards that they'll never touch solvents. We don't steam in with Just Say No', we provide facts about solvent abuse, in a lively, interesting way with discussion, so they can make informed choices.

"Education and prevention is the key and it has to start in the classroom. If Chantelle had had an education programme like this she may have known enough not to try it."

Chantelle had gone to see friends who were babysitting when she tried sniffing. "They were messing about," says Pat. "She did something silly for a laugh, it was the equivalent to having an illicit glass of cider when I was a kid. That can happen to any teenager. Just because your child is clean-living, hard-working and against drugs doesn't mean they won't, at some stage, try sniffing lighter fuel, aerosols or glue."

The charity also helps youngsters deal with an emergency. "When Chantelle collapsed her friends thought she was joking," says Pat. "If they'd known more about it they might have saved her life."

Pat has coped remarkably well. She says her work with the fund, as well as her religious faith, connects her to Chantelle.

"She's in a better place, I'll see her again. My faith has helped enormously," smiles Pat, who joined Bradford's Abundant Life Centre 20 years ago. "I've met bereaved parents who can't move away from the grave. I could've turned in on myself and got bitter but I had to keep going for my three other children - and Chantelle wouldn't want me to give up.

"Setting up this fund, watching it grow from an acorn into an oak tree - it's a living, organic thing - gave me a focus and inner peace, it's made me a stronger person. I'm so proud of it.

"Initially I wasn't well enough; grief made me ill, I came out in skin diseases. But our pastor suggested raising awareness for other children and parents, it sprang from there."

Before she knew it Pat was at the House of Commons speaking to MPs about changing the legal age limit for buying lighter fuel.

"When Chantelle died I'd never heard of solvent abuse. I knew about glue sniffing, not butane gas, and I didn't understand the dangers. I thought she'd come round," she says. "Cigarette lighter fuel is the big killer - it can stop your heart instantly - yet before we brought the issue to the Government's attention any teenager could buy it over the counter.

"Chantelle was 16, old enough then to go into a shop and buy it. Solvent abuse still isn't illegal, and products are cheap and available. You find hairspray, cleaning fluid and nail varnish remover around any house."

Pat says there's a long way to go with media coverage. "The Press focuses on drug abuse. Solvent abuse is still seen as something dirty on street corners and not as harmful as drug abuse, yet it kills six times more teenagers than ecstasy."

The Chantelle Bleau Fund, which went on to win a Millennium Award, has led Pat to other projects helping people, particularly young women. She has worked with the Mercy Project, a bus service providing hot drinks, food and advice for prostitutes on Bradford's streets. "We don't preach but we try to show they can have a different lifestyle," says Pat.

She's now involved with Bradford-based charity Mercy UK which runs a house in Oxenhope for troubled young women suffering eating disorders, self-harm, depression and sexual abuse.

She has also been a volunteer visitor in women's prisons, worked with street children in America, and is involved with Connect, an organisation helping vulnerable women rebuild their lives. She even finds time to be a foster carer.

In 2005 she was named one of Britain's bravest women of the year by a national magazine.

"I haven't had time to feel sorry for myself!" says Pat. "I get letters from mothers of daughters in trouble, I've met women on the streets who are heroin addicts - some of them started off on solvents. I've met bereaved parents consumed with grief. I've met street children living on the beach. There's always someone worse off.

"I look for the good things in life; I've got three healthy children, as well as my foster children, who are doing fine. And I always feel close to Chantelle. I take life one day at a time."

• For more information about the Chantelle Bleau Memorial Fund ring (01274) 726326 or e-mail enquiries@cbmf.co.uk