Spending years coping with the heartache and deceit of a drug-addicted daughter were no preparation for the grief of her oldest child's death from a heroin overdose. Linda Funnell talks to Jan Winter about being a parent in today's world and how she has channelled her anger into trying to help others in the same predicament. And she gives her thoughts on a new book to be published this month by psychologist Judith Harris, who believes parents have little power to determine the sort of people their children will become.

WHEN Linda Funnell was called to hospital in April, she had a mother's instinct that something dreadful had happened to her eldest daughter.

It wasn't the first time she had been to the accident and emergency department to see Sarah, but this time her worst fears were about to become reality. Sarah had died after injecting herself with heroin at her boyfriend's home, only days after being released from prison.

"It was heartbreaking," says Linda. "And I hadn't seen her - she had come out of prison on the Thursday and was coming up to see us on Monday. I had only spoken to her on the phone.

"I got home and the other kids were going through this thing where they remembered they had argued with Sarah and had said stuff to her the last time they had seen her."

Sarah was 25 when she died and the whole family had been affected by her drugs habit which went back more than a decade, to when she was only 14.

Linda's eldest son William, now 19, also became addicted to drugs and, like Sarah, ended up in jail after getting involved in crime to pay for his habit.

He was in prison at the time of Sarah's death. Says Linda: "When William turned up at the funeral with the prison officers, well ..."

It was a traumatic moment for mother and son alike.

"You don't expect to bury your own child."

And since his sister's death, William, who is still in jail, has been working hard to educate and rehabilitate himself, giving Linda hope for his future for the first time. She visits him each week, this week finding he has been doing a parenting course. "He says he'll be able to tell me where I've gone wrong!"

Linda, now 43, had Sarah when she was only 16 and went on to marry William. They had three more children, William junior, John, now 17, and Lindsey, who is almost 16. The family live at Thorpe Edge.

Family life was much like that in any other busy household. "There were the normal family ups and downs, getting up, getting them to school, the things everybody does. You think you are doing right, you put certain values into the them. They were always in at a certain time.

"It would be nice if you got your baby with a book and video of what to do! You could say I've read the book, got the T-shirt!"

Linda stayed at home with the children. She has herself suffered ill-health, having asthma and needing open-heart surgery ten years ago to widen heart valves which were too narrow when she was born. She still faces the prospect of another operation to repeat the procedure. As the children got older, Linda and her husband found their four children had very different characteristics. The older two, Sarah and William, were similar in temperament - both ended up as drug addicts. The younger two shared a certain type of personality and both are now mature people; John has a regular job and enjoyable social life, Lindsey is a self-confident young woman who is still studying at school.

Says Linda: "William and Sarah needed to fit in, they needed to fit into a group. They were always out hanging about with what I'd call the wrong type. Both Lindsey and John make their own company, they don't need to fit in with others."

At first, the signs of Sarah's heroin addiction seemed to be the same as the signs of teenage rebellion. She would stay out all night, play truant, refuse to obey her parents. Then Linda was told Sarah had a £250-a-day heroin habit.

"At first I thought she would grow out of it. There wasn't so much publicity about heroin then. Heroin was seen as an expensive drug that nobody did. But you look at the signs of heroin use and look at the signs for a normal teenager! All those years ago, who could you turn to?

"At first you go into denial. It's still a taboo subject now but it was more so then. Sarah was staying out, away for days. In the beginning you are worried, but as the years go on it's the same old story and excuses.

"When they're on heroin they're very good at lying and making excuses - but having done drugs awareness courses my children now couldn't pull the wool over my eyes like that!"

That time was the start of years of trauma, with Sarah committing crime to feed her habit, stealing things from her own family, ending up pregnant and having the baby adopted.

Linda tried having Sarah arrested, hoping to shock her out of her dependence on drugs. Even the drug-related deaths of two boyfriends - one found dead at her side - never put her off drugs for long enough.

Doctors were not as aware of drug dependency as they are now, and although finally Linda managed to find a detoxification programme for her daughter, it did not help in the long-term.

Linda took the hard step of banning Sarah and William from the house while they were using drugs - only to spend nights worrying about where they were and what they were doing.

It was hard to balance the needs of all her children - the younger two would be distressed when Sarah took their things in order to afford drugs and would blame Linda when she invited her eldest daughter back into the house.

"I shout and rave and rant and say I don't love her, but underneath you can't switch off your love. If you switched off you would stop being their mother. How do you stop that? You can't.

"I talked to the other kids and they couldn't understand how I had let her and William live back with us. he would also pinch things from them. But I said if I stopped being a mother to William and Sarah it would mean stopping being a mother to John and Lindsey too. But you live with that thought that they could die."

Psychologist Judith Harris's new book The Nurture Assumption explodes some of our deepest beliefs and gives something new to put in their place.

She says it is what children experience outside the home, in the company of their peers, that matters most in the long run. Everything we usually hear about parenting relies on the way parents bring up their children as responsible for how they turn out.

But the book says that sometimes, through no fault of their own, good parents sometimes have bad kids.

Linda agrees there is a great deal of pressure from other teenagers, believing that Sarah and William had personalities which meant they felt a need to fit in and follow the crowd. These characteristics are not found in her younger children.

The ready availability of heroin on the streets has altered teenagers' behaviour - Linda says when she was young, kids spent cash on bottles of cider. "Heroin is now cheaper than buying a bottle of cider," she says.

Linda and others on the estate have worked to set up a group which will help drug users and their parents, and are working to find premises and funds for a telephone helpline.

Linda's neighbour Kath Leach says the group undertook a survey on the estate about attitudes to drugs, and now wants to offer confidential support for anyone who needs it.

The group is called USER Friendly, the initials standing for understanding, sensitive, education, responsive, which sums up the group's attitudes.

The group can be contacted on Bradford (01274) 409098, or 786216. The Nurture Assumption, by Judith Harris, is published by Bloomsbury on October 29, priced £18.99.

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