A MOTHER of a North Yorkshire teenager who lost her life after taking drugs has launched a campaign to help parents.

Leah Heyes, 15, lost her life in 2019, in a Northallerton car park after taking two 'MDMA bombs' (a powder form of Ecstasy) whilst with a group of friends.

Her mum, Kerry Roberts, has launched the month-long 'NotMyChild' campaign with North Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner, Zoe Metcalfe, which aims to encourage parents and guardians to have positive conversations with their teenagers about drugs and alcohol before any harm has happened.

Kerry said: "For years we have been telling our children to ‘just say no’ to drugs, and in an ideal world maybe that would be enough, but the world is complicated, growing up is hard, and young people are probably going to take risks, so as parents we need to be having different conversations with them. 

"On the day Leah died, she wouldn’t have understood that the drugs she took would seriously harm her, let alone end her life.

"Although I had the ‘drugs talk’ with her, we didn’t talk about all of the things that are in the NotMyChild campaign."

Commissioner Zoe has said the NotMyChild website is to give parents and guardians the ideas to get the conversation started and access to professional advice.

She is also writing to secondary school Headteachers across York and North Yorkshire to share a joint letter from herself and Kerry which encourages parents and guardians to start conversations about substances early on.

Further information is at www.notmychild.info