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'Supporting young people to make safe choices about drugs'
The title of this blog post is the motto of the Daniel Spargo-Mabbs Foundation, a registered charity. Here, Director and Founder Fiona Spargo-Mabbs tells us about the tragic circumstances behind the founding of the charity, and its connection with our youth service Fearless…
Fiona Spargo-Mabbs
On Friday 17 January 2014 my funny, chatty, kind, popular and big-hearted sixteen-year-old son Dan (pictured at the top of the page) went to off a party locally with friends. He didn’t come home. The policeman who knocked in the early hours told us he’d been found collapsed at a rave the other side of London having taken ecstasy. It had been fatally strong. We spent the next two days in intensive care, watching him die from multiple organ failure.
When Dan died, we realised a lot of things. We realised drugs were much closer to our door than we’d thought – and ours is a very ordinary door – and are part of young people’s social environment, especially by their mid to late teens. We realised if someone like Dan, with nothing to mark him out as being at risk of significant harm from drugs - other than a curious and adventurous spirit and a huge zest for life - could nevertheless end up in this worst of all worst case scenarios, then that risk was there for any young person, along with all the possible shades of harm and damage drugs and alcohol can cause. And we knew we had to do whatever we could to prevent this.
So my husband Tim, our older son Jacob and I founded a drug and alcohol education charity in Dan’s name, the Daniel Spargo-Mabbs Foundation. Our team delivers drug and alcohol education workshops to young people and their parents and carers. We have a comprehensive range of evidence-based planning and resources for teachers to deliver drug and alcohol education to their students throughout secondary school. We deliver training to staff and professionals working with young people. We train and support a team of Youth Ambassadors.
'I Love You, Mum', 2019 tour
We commissioned a verbatim play by award-winning playwright Mark Wheeller which tells Dan’s story in the words of his family and friends. Taking as its title Dan’s last words to his mum when he went out that last time, ‘I Love You, Mum – I Promise I Won’t Die’, this was published by Bloomsbury in 2017 and is being studied, taught and performed across the UK and overseas. We also commissioned an adapted version of the play and have funded three professional Theatre in Education tours of schools, and it will tour again in 2020.
We are doing everything we can, in every way we can, to keep other people’s children safe. And the story of Dan is at the heart of everything we do.
In the five years since Dan died the work of our charity has grown and grown, through word of mouth and recommendation, across London and across the UK. All the while the need for it has grown just as rapidly, and one of these growing areas of need is protecting children and young people from the risk of grooming and exploitation into County Lines drug dealing. The targeting, befriending and enticing of children and young people into involvement with criminal activity, controlling them through fear and forcing them to commit crimes for others’ benefit, is a method with a long history, but the scale of current practice is unprecedented and expanding, and through modern technology and social media the scope for any young person to get caught up is huge.
The good news in our sad story is that any sort of harm is totally avoidable, because there’s always a choice involved. Prevention in drug and alcohol education is all about equipping young people with the knowledge, understanding, life skills and resilience they need to navigate those choices safely. Alongside that, knowing what to do if they feel unsafe, or see another is at risk, is vital.
We’re really excited to be working with Fearless in London to bring County Lines workshops to young people in Brent this term. Our partnership with Fearless and Crimestoppers brings these resources for young people together in a way which is crucial to save young lives. We stand together to do all we can to do just this.
Fiona Spargo-Mabbs
Director, Founder and Dan’s mum
