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Caitlan's Campaign

Episode 15: Caitlin’s Campaign

 

 

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This episode is dedicated to Caitlin ♥.

Episode Guest - Sharron Huddleston

Sharron Huddleston’s 18-year-old daughter Caitlin was killed in a car crash on a rural road in Cumbria in July 2017. Caitlin was a passenger in the car. The crash was put down to the inexperience of the newly qualified driver, who sadly also lost her life.

Sharron has been tirelessly campaigning for a British Graduated Driving License ever since.  Sharron’s campaign launched in 2018 and is named ‘Caitlin’s Campaign’ in memory of her precious daughter. 

Sharron recently formed the ‘Forget-me-not Families Uniting’ group (a parental pressure group), which is a group of parents and families bereaved through road crashes, all calling on the Government to implement this life saving law, Graduated Driving Licensing for young novice drivers. 

Summary:

Sharron Huddleston has been campaigning for the introduction of a Graduated Driving License Scheme since her daughter Caitlin was killed in a car crash in 2017. Caitlin was the passenger of a driver who had only held a license for 4 months and whose inexperience contributed to the fatal outcome. Here Sharron talks about her lovely daughter, her grief, and her determination to make our roads safer. 

Resources:

Brake’s Graduated Driving License campaign 

Caitlin’s Story

Road Peace the National Charity for Road Crash Victims.

Forget-me-not Families Uniting private Facebook group

Find Sharron’s campaign on X

Update:

Email from Sharron on 15th October 2024:

The big news was, that we have received the full support for GDL to be implemented as law from Chief Constable Jo Shiner who is the most senior roads policing officer in the UK. She holds the road safety portfolio…

The campaign group has now grown to 157 bereaved family members all calling for GDL. 

https://mailchi.mp/roadpeace/graduated-driving-licensing-in-the-national-spotlight-again?e=67740e583d 

In the last few days a member of our group has set up a new petition for GDL:

https://www.change.org/p/safer-driving-licensing-for-newly-qualified-17-19-year-olds?recruited_by_id=94381330-880d-11ef-9530d3f149c6d31c&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf&utm_medium=copylink&sfnsn=scwspmo

The RAC Foundation proposal to Government on what they think a British Graduated Driving License system should include was released last week too…If you listen from 1hr 46 mins 36 secs you can listen to Elizabeth Box from the RAC Foundation explaining the RAC Foundation proposal for a British Graduated Driving License system and why and how it will save young lives on our roads. Ian Greenwood and myself speak too. Chief Constable Jo Shiner is interviewed at 3 hours 11 mins and 45 secs giving her support, where again you can hear Ian and myself speak. Listen here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0js7yjs 

 

 






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Episode 15 Transcript:

Caitlin’s Campaign

Debbie Enever, Host

Sharron Huddleston, Guest

[00:00:00] Hello. This is the Bereaved Parents Club podcast. It’s the club none of us want to be members of, but here we are. My name is Debbie and I’m a bereaved parent. This podcast is for all of us to share and celebrate the stories of our children and offer support to each other. Each episode will explore topics that have relevance to us as we navigate the world as bereaved parents.

Whether your loss was last week, last month, last year, or even last century, you are welcome here. And whether your child was a baby, a youngster, a teenager, an adult, or even a parent themselves, you are welcome here. You are welcome here. Please be aware that each episode will deal with themes of death and loss.[00:01:00] 

So today, my guest is Sharron Huddleston. Sharron has been campaigning for the introduction of a Graduated Driving Licence Scheme in the UK ever since her daughter Caitlin was killed in a car crash in 2017. Caitlin was the passenger of a driver who’d only held a licence for four months and whose inexperience contributed to the fatal outcome.

Sharron is here to tell us about her lovely daughter, her grief, and her determination to make our roads safer. Sharron, welcome, thank you for joining me today. Before we introduce the work that you’ve been doing around road safety, would you tell us a little bit more about yourself, about Caitlin, and about your loss.

Thank you, Debbie. Thank you for that introduction. So yes, my name is Sharron Huddleston and I am the mother of Caitlin Huddleston and I’m also the founder of Caitlin’s Campaign. Caitlin [00:02:00] is my youngest child of three and she has an older sister and an older brother. And she is an auntie of two boys, which are her sister’s children.

Now, Caitlin was, um, very quietly spoken. She was a very gentle and shy girl, and she was very thoughtful as well. She was very sensitive and she was, um, a little homebody as well. She was still at that age where she, she liked still doing things with me and her dad. And I don’t know whether that’s because she was the youngest of the three and I kept her the baby of the family, but me and her were very, very close, which I am with, with all three of my children. 

She loved her music and her taste in music was very similar to what me and her dad liked, absolutely love Fleetwood Mac. She liked Kate Bush and she took drama at school and actually danced to Kate Bush’s song in a drama exam, um, which is the song that has recently come back in the chats again, the [00:03:00] Running Up That Hill, which, that was something that I desperately wanted to tell her about actually. And she loved 80s music, she loved watching TV. As I said, she was at home all the time kind of thing. She, she loved, um, Game of Thrones. She loved that programme. Her and her dad used to love watching that together. And her dream job would have been to be a criminologist, actually. And she loved true life murder mysteries that she always used to watch on TV. And as I say, we were very close as a mother and daughter. 

And she had a lot of good friends, a lot of good work colleagues too. She worked in, um, a cafe at Ravenglass Railway and she loved her work colleagues there. And they kept her as – a bit like me – they kept her, the baby of the, the work colleagues there ’cause she was the youngest one there. And they used to mother, her and her nickname at work was ‘Auds’ after [00:04:00] Audrey Hepburn because Catlin had this lovely long black hair and she of course, working in a cafe to wear it up and so mainly her hair was tied up in a bun all the time, and she had such petite features that that was her, her nickname at work was Auds. The staff there have planted a tree in memory of Caitlin. And on the plaque that they’ve put underneath the tree, it says ‘in memory of a special work colleague, our Auds’. Yeah. Lovely thing for them to do in memory of Caitlin

So, um, I’ll go on now to that evening that, um, tragically changed our lives forever. So on the 14th of July in 2017, I came home from looking after my grandchildren. And Caitlin was already home from work, and she came down to the kitchen to me and, um, I was making some tea and she’d already told me that she [00:05:00] was going to be going out with her friends for an evening meal.

But she’d come down to the kitchen as she’d asked me to fasten the buttons on the back of her blouse for her. And as I say, then she went back up to her room to get ready to go out for this evening meal. And then her friends came to pick her up. And I shouted Caitlin down the stairs and, um, she came down and we’d been talking to her friend in the kitchen. And there was another friend in the car waiting outside as well. 

And, uh, just before Caitlin left, she turned to me and she just asked, ‘Do I look alright, mam?’ And I said, ‘yeah’, she always looked alright in my eyes. She was my baby, my daughter, she was beautiful. And then I just saw the back of her head as she shut the back door, the long dark hair as she left.

And that was the last time that I saw Caitlin alive. Um, sadly, on the journey to [00:06:00] the restaurant, there was a collision and the, um, the driver had entered a bend a little too fast on this rural road that they were travelling on in Cumbria. And unfortunately, she lost control of the car, and it spun onto the opposite side of the road.

And unfortunately, there was a van traveling in the opposite direction on the other side of the road. And the car spun into the van. And this meant that the full impact of the collision went into the front passenger door where Caitlin was sitting. And so, Caitlin was crushed and died on impact, I’ve been told.

Now, the driver also was killed in this collision and the backseat passenger was severely injured, as was the van driver. This was the first time Caitlin had been in her friend’s car. Caitlin herself couldn’t drive, and the backseat passenger couldn’t [00:07:00] drive. So there was nobody in the car to advise the driver to maybe slow down a little bit as they were coming up to a bend in the road.

Oh Sharron, I’m so sorry. 

Thank you. 

So, in the aftermath of what happened with Caitlin, I mean, obviously, this is a devastating time for your family, but you’ve taken on a real campaign role. about campaigning for better road safety. So can you tell us a little bit more about how that emerged from what happened with Caitlin?

Obviously, I was in very deep shock and grief for Caitlin. My world revolved around my children and to have one taken from me, um, I didn’t know how I was going to go on without her and I was a bit like a zombie actually walking around [00:08:00] and, um, I basically couldn’t do anything and I had no energy and my escape from it all, from the realization or the reality of it all, I should say, was to sleep. I just wanted to sleep. Um, a lot of people find that they can’t sleep in these circumstances, but that was my escape, was to sleep. And I was in a world that I didn’t want to be in anymore, to tell you the truth. 

And I wasn’t really receiving any, um, support I felt from anywhere, but I had been given, on the day that we identified Caitlin, I’d been given by the police, um, a green folder and it had ‘Brake’ written on it. And, um, I decided one night I was reading through it and I thought I’m going to get in touch with them. [00:09:00] So the next morning I rang them, and I am just so grateful that I’d been given that booklet and Brake were a lifesaver for me. They fully supported me, let me talk for however long I wanted on the phone and then they made me aware of all the risks that are posed to young drivers.

And, um, that was then when they told me about. Uh, a graduated driving license that is law in other countries. And this sudden realization to me that if we’d have had that law in the UK, then this crash wouldn’t have happened. Caitlin wouldn’t have been killed in a newly qualified driver’s car. And the driver wouldn’t have taken that journey that evening because by law, she wouldn’t have been allowed to carry passengers being newly qualified.

And so that [00:10:00] realisation that this crash was preventable and these four families that were devastated by this crash wouldn’t be going through all this if we’d have just had that law in the UK. And so from, from then on, I kind of started researching. 

Can you explain a little bit for listeners about what a graduated driving license scheme might involve?

Yeah, so, in other countries, um, such as New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Austria, there’s so many other countries that it’s in, many, um, states in the USA as well. It’s what is put on young, newly qualified drivers. Safety precautions are put in place and that’s to, to guide them, kind of thing, once they’ve passed their test.

And there’s lots of different elements to a graduated driving license, but it’s basically they phase it [00:11:00] in that you can then drive with passengers and, and such, such as different times of day as well. So the one element that I am passionate about is the element of newly qualified young drivers don’t carry their peer age friends as passengers for a set amount of months after they’ve passed the test.

But as I say, in, in other countries, there’s, there’s lots of different elements to it, such as nighttime driving as well. And then there’s also, before you pass your test, there’s also, um, like, um, an element of, you have to drive for a certain amount of hours and have a logbook of logging these hours that you drive for before you can actually be put in for your test. Now in Australia, it’s 120 hours you have to take before you can actually even be put in for your test. But as I say, it’s not one size fits all. It’s whatever country [00:12:00] picks and chooses what they want within this graduated driving license system. They choose what, what they would like to implement.

But unfortunately, the UK doesn’t have anything. We let a 17 year old minor – because our law is that they’re not an adult until they’re 18 or classed as an adult – so we will let a 17 year old who may be only have been driving for a matter of, or learning to drive for a matter of weeks on the day they pass the test, they can go and take all their friends in the car, drive on any kind of road, in whatever weather, at any time of day, we don’t have any safety precautions in place in this country. And that’s what we’re trying to campaign for and get put in place to help save young lives and our roads. 

And in every country that it’s been implemented in, there is a staggering amount [00:13:00] of evidence that it reduces young deaths on our roads. 

So I think that that’s quite an important message for people to understand that actually it makes a difference. This is a practical, evidenced road safety measure. 

Actually, yeah, all the evidence is actually compelling, you know, that it works in other countries. And unfortunately, our government have been ignoring all this evidence for many years now, but fingers crossed now that we’ve got a new government in place. Things might turn, you know. 

Well, that’s it. It’s going to be fresh eyes and fresh ears, isn’t it? If nothing else. 

And I think as well, what about me like speaking tonight on a, on a podcast or wherever, on a radio show or whatever, what I’m trying to do is to raise awareness about this law, because I have so many people say to me, what is a graduated driving license? And that’s the sad thing. I didn’t know anything about. a graduated driving license beforehand. For me, [00:14:00] I thought that motorways were the dangerous roads, but now, because of all my research and being in contact with so many researchers and road safety charities, I have now, um, been made aware of the dangers of rural roads to young drivers.

And that’s what I need to get across to parents and teenagers. You know that, like I say, I didn’t know that the leading cause of death in our younger generation was road traffic collisions. Most people think nothing of climbing into a car and driving a short or long distance daily. But in reality, five people die a day on UK roads and 80 people are injured a day.

And in 2022, there were 4,935 people that were killed or seriously injured in crashes involving at least one young driver. Now this [00:15:00] includes other road users of all ages, such as people traveling in separate cars or pedestrians. And I don’t think people realize the actual horrific amount that there is. And, um, I, I just think that’s an, an important thing to let people realize as, as well. 

I didn’t know that, and as I say, I didn’t know that rural roads were where most young drivers have collisions and 71 percent of fatal crashes involving young drivers happen on rural roads. And this is the message that I’m wanting to get out, you know, and just explain to people the positives of a graduated driving license, because we do find that media tend to report negatively on it.

They use the word like ‘restricting’ and, and ‘banning’ and, and that kind of thing. And, you know, to [00:16:00] say that it’s restricting young drivers, well, no, it’s not. We’re wanting to save their lives. It’s proven to save young lives on the roads. The people that are restricted is my daughter, my daughter and her friend, you know, they’ve had their lives taken from them and they’re now buried in a churchyard at the age of 18.

So to say that, that it’s restricting, no, no, it’s not. It’s to give children a better future in life, you know, to, to, to protect them in the most dangerous parts of driving, you know. Which is the first six months after learning, after passing your test. You know that one in five young drivers will have a crash in that time. So, as I say, it’s safety precautions that we need. 

Well, thank you for explaining that because I think that’d be really useful for people listening because I would have only been able to hazard a guess about what that might have meant. So it’s really [00:17:00] helpful to have it spelled out more clearly for me. So thank you, Sharron. Will you tell us a little bit about how you began doing the campaigning, sort of what Caitlin’s message is and perhaps tell us a little bit about ‘Forget Me Not Families Uniting’? 

Yes, well, as I say, once I’d found out about a graduated driving licence, I also found out that I could ask the coroner at Caitlin’s inquest to back this law being implemented in our country. So at Caitlin’s inquest, I asked for a ‘Preventing Future Deaths Report’. The coroner would write to the Department for Transport requesting that this is implemented and it’s to stop other young deaths from happening in the same circumstances as what Caitlin was killed in. That’s why it’s called a Preventing Future Deaths Report.

And luckily at Caitlin’s inquest, the, the coroner – which we were very grateful for – he said, yes, he would write the report and that was amazing actually for him [00:18:00] to do this. Then after that, I thought, well, if a coroner’s backing it, surely I need to start campaigning about it. You know, that the media all picked up on the inquest and that the coroner had backed the calls for this to be implemented as a law.

And so I thought, well, I think I should maybe start campaigning about this. So then I decided that I would, and I came up with the name ‘Caitlin’s Campaign’. And, um, we launched Caitlin’s Campaign on what would have been Caitlin’s 19th birthday, and that was in 2018. So, it was just after the inquest, which was in the September, and, um, we launched it on Caitlin’s birthday, which is the 23rd of November.

And, strangely enough, her birthday always falls during Brake’s Road Safety Week as well, actually. And that’s very strange, with Caitlin being killed in a road traffic collision, that her birthday falls during that week. Um, so yeah, so we, we launched Caitlin’s Campaign. 

Then I carried on working very closely with Brake and they put me in touch [00:19:00] with Edmund King from the AA and he was doing a campaign about rural roads and young drivers. And he asked, could he use Caitlin’s story to, to be part of his campaign? 

And so then there was, um, a one hour radio show that was dedicated to the last hour of Caitlin’s life and it was called ‘Caitlin’s Hour’ and it was just giving evidence and raising awareness of the dangers of rural roads to young drivers. And after working with Edmund, I put forward to him that I wanted to – as I’ve said before – I wanted to raise awareness to as many parents and teenagers as possible about the dangers posed to them after passing their test. And so, me and Edmund, together, then produced the Caitlin’s Message information pages.

And these were published in the First Car magazine, which is handed out to teenagers. Um, and for their parents as well. And I was so pleased [00:20:00] that Edmund had said yes to my idea and then helped me with it as well and to get them produced. It was absolutely fantastic, you know. 

So the, so the information in the, Caitlin’s Messages are, as I say, about rural roads. And we’ve also got like different tips, Caitlin’s Tips they’re called, to give advice to young drivers. And one of the things is we say is with every extra same age passenger, you’re four times more likely to have a crash, potentially killing yourself and your friends compared to driving alone. And that’s something else that I don’t think a lot of people are aware of.

You know, so we say like consider not giving friends a lift until you’ve gained experience or as a passenger only travel with drivers with experience that you trust. And to also remember that fatal crashes are more likely at night or early in the morning. All these things that not everybody walks around knowing about, you know.

So, it’s just [00:21:00] advice that we’re giving and, um, raising awareness. So we, we explain what happened with Caitlin at the beginning of Caitlin’s Message. And then Edmund’s idea was to put in kind of, um, a letter from Caitlin. To, to say, what would I be doing now if we’d have only known about all the dangers posed to, to young drivers, carrying passengers, et cetera.

And so that, that’s part of it as well. So yeah, so that was how Caitlin’s campaign came about, inquest. And also from me finding out about graduated driving license through Brake. And so thinking I’ve got to campaign for this because Caitlin would be alive if we’d have had this law. 

And then my work carrying on with my campaigning has put me in touch with so many people that like I say, I now work alongside Edmund from the AA and we came up with Caitlin’s Message and the Caitlin’s Hour actually won an award for the radio show, which was absolutely fantastic [00:22:00] as well.

So then from then, I thought, well, it’s now six years that I’ve been campaigning for a graduated driving license. And, um, I thought, well, there must be lots of other parents out there. I do have contact with a few parents through Brake and Road Peace, the National Charity for Road Crash Victims too. And so last year I just came up with an idea that rather than campaigning solely on my own, if we all got together, our voices would be stronger and louder.

And I put the idea to Brake and Road Peace and they fully backed me and said, ‘yes, that’s a great idea’. And then I contacted a couple of other parents that I knew and said about it. And they thought it was a great idea as well. And so then Rebecca Morris from Road Peace, who helps me with the campaign, she said to me, you’re going to have to think of a name, Sharron, for this, for this group that you’re putting together. 

And I thought, well, you know, I feel that [00:23:00] our children are forgotten by government, actually, that road deaths are accepted, that there’s no MPs standing up or ministers shouting about all these road deaths. As I say, it’s the leading cause of death in 17 to 24 year olds and the main cause of death worldwide. And so I thought, forget me nots, forget me not flowers. You know, our children shouldn’t be forgotten. And I thought, Forget Me Not Families, and we are uniting. So I came up with the name, ‘Forget Me Not Families Uniting’.

And from there, the group has just grown and grown. And speaking more about it as well, because we launched it actually this year in April. And myself and Dr. Ian Greenwood, who campaigns also for a graduated driving licence, and he’s a bereaved father. We were invited on BBC Breakfast to speak about launching the Forget Me Not Families Uniting.

And [00:24:00] from there, actually, we had a lot more families come forward. And after that, we then spoke on the Jeremy Vine Radio 2 show. And every time we speak publicly about the group being formed, we’re getting more and more families coming forward. And currently, as from, as today, we’ve got 144 families in our group.

Now, the Forget Me Not Families Uniting, it’s a private group that we have. And when people request to join, I ask what’s the reason for joining, as it’s a private group for bereaved parents, for bereaved siblings, or aunts, cousins. And as I say, it’s so we can all support each other. And that has really helped a lot of people in our group, I find. Because you do have a connection with another bereaved parent if you’ve lost a child in similar circumstances. 

And with our group [00:25:00] as well, we may have some newly bereaved parents that aren’t yet feeling strong enough to maybe write to MPs or to speak to media. So anybody that’s just that little bit further along the line that does feel that little bit stronger to do something like that will do things like that. And the other families can just posts on the page and talk. It’s just support for anybody. 

I think there’s something about just comfort in numbers too because even if you don’t really say anything, you just feel immediately understood by the other members of the group. 

Yeah, that’s right. And as I say, if you’re very early on in your grief and the only thing that you want to do is – because we have a campaign board, it’s like a collage of photographs of our children that we’ve, we’ve used at a Road Peace event and on TV as well – and if you only feel that you just want to share your child’s photograph, just so that they’re [00:26:00] part of that collage board, that you know that your child is being remembered on that board, in the face of, we need a graduated driving licence, you know, parents can just do that if they want to, as long as their child’s on that board you know, because it’s, it’s that worry as well of my child will be forgotten. 

Absolutely. But it’s very easy for people to look at road traffic statistics and forget the individuals involved in those statistics. So I think what you’re doing is making those individuals, not statistics, but to be visible. And that’s really important in itself, to remember that there are people behind those numbers. 

Exactly, yeah. And that’s what I say as well, I have that written in one of my reports to the Department of Transport actually, that our children aren’t statistics, they are dearly loved children. You know, and, and that is a very important point, yeah.

So what are you up to at the [00:27:00] moment? Um, maybe what can listeners do? 

Well, if anybody is listening and thinks that what I’ve described as a graduated driving license may have saved their child’s life, if you would like to join the group, you’re very welcome to. And as I’ve explained, you can do as little or as much as you want to in that group.

You know, even just writing a letter to your MP to, to try and get their support, or for them to speak up and ask a question in parliamentary questions or whatever, you know. But, as I said, I’m wanting to make people aware that this group is, is there for campaigning, for a graduated driving licence. So if anybody would like to join, contact Brake or Road Peace and they’ll put you in contact with me. 

Yeah, we’ll make sure that all the links that you give us Sharron are available on the episode listing and on our webpage. So if anyone wants to look at any of the information that we’ve spoken about today, they can, they can access that quite easily from our pages.

That’s brilliant. Thank you [00:28:00] very much for that. Yeah. The other thing that people could do is as I say, write to their MP and what we are looking for as well, which we’ll be able to share with you soon is we are hoping to set up a petition. 

Wonderful. Well as, yeah, as soon as you have those details, we’ll make sure that we kinda share those as well on our, all our social media and our website and everything as well.

Sharron, obviously you’re very busy and you speak to a lot of people and you’re doing a lot of work. Are there any other messages that you want to pass on, you know, with your campaigning head on or with your personal head on? Are there any messages that you would like to pass on to other parents listening today?

Well, as I was saying about early on in my grief, I didn’t know where I was going to turn, what I was going to do. I didn’t know where I, where my purpose was in the world kind of thing, after this tragic thing had happened to our family. The thing is, I always think as [00:29:00] well with road traffic collisions is people always think, ‘well, that’ll never happen to me’, you know, Caitlin couldn’t drive, so, but the thing is, it can happen to anybody. I’m proof, our family’s proof of that. It can happen to anybody. It’s the suddenness of road traffic collisions. There’s no saying goodbyes. They’ve gone, you know, there’s no telling them you love them and all that’s taken from you with the road traffic collision because it is a sudden, sudden tragic death.

But what I want to say to anybody that is maybe in my position and is listening is that doing this, like what I’m doing now, the campaigning and raising awareness, gives me a purpose in life. And doing this daily, it’s now like, um, a full time job for me kind of thing. That’s my choice to do that. I want to do it. But the positive side of it is that I get to talk about Caitlin all the time. [00:30:00] And that’s the one worry that I think bereaved parents have, like I said earlier, is that their child’s name might not be spoken as often as it should be, or as often as it would have been if they were still here. And with me doing this, I’m talking about Caitlin all the time, you know, and that’s, that’s a blessing for me.

And that a feeling of that, I’ve still got Caitlin close to me, I’m still her mam, I’ve still, you know, got her actively in my life, she may not be physically here, but me writing reports, I’m writing about Caitlin, you know, with me speaking, such as in a podcast, or in an interview, I’m talking about Caitlin, you know, and so that’s what keeps me with a focus kind of thing and a closeness to Caitlin. I’m doing this like any mother or parent would for their child and that’s important to me that I’m still for others, Caitlin’s mum, if that makes sense, what I’ve [00:31:00] just said. 

That makes complete sense. Here I am doing a podcast, you know, and, and the person who inspired that for me is Dan. And every time I do a podcast, I get the chance to talk about him again. So, I absolutely understand your motivation for doing what you’re doing, Sharron. 

Is there anything else that you feel that we’ve not covered at all that you wanted to speak about? 

I just want to say to anybody out there that has lost a child in a road traffic collision, like you and I have, that Brake and Road Peace are wonderful charities. And I honestly don’t know where I would be without them. And, and so I would advise anybody if they’re struggling, pick the phone up and speak, speak to the charities because they are, as I said, they were my lifeline. 

Thank you, Sharron. We always ask, um, our guests to tell us a little something that they’re grateful for, um, at the end of a podcast. Uh, [00:32:00] usually something lighthearted, um, because obviously we’re talking about really intense things and people will have a lot to think about when we’ve spoken about, um, these topics. So, Sharron, can I ask you what you’re grateful for? 

Yeah, um, the thing that I’m grateful for is wine, chocolate, oh, and my bath. I love my bath. So, the thing is with, with that question is that as I say, you know, at the end of the day it’s just lovely to have a nice glass of wine, isn’t it? And through the day it’s nice to grab a bit of chocolate just for that little bit of feel good moment. And I know that Caitlin would agree totally a hundred percent with me.

So after we’ve had this podcast, then you’re off for wine and chocolate in the bath?! 

Yes!

That was my conversation with Sharron Huddleston, Caitlin’s mum. For more details about everything we’ve talked about today, please check out our episode listing and website. And we’d be really grateful if you would [00:33:00] spread the word about the podcast and share wherever you can on your social media by word of mouth, however you can.

This episode is dedicated to Caitlin.