My daughter’s suicide could have been prevented. Now I fight to save other children like Jen: Sharren Bridges

Teased, excluded and utterly overwhelmed by her schoolwork, Sharren Bridges’ 13-year-old daughter Jen found school a daily trial.

So many teens experience the same, of course – but Jen, who was autistic and also suffered from ADHD, felt the pressure intensely.

Yet when Jen’s mother asked her school for help – such as dropping French and German, which the year eight student was not planning on taking for GCSE, to give her more time to do homework – they refused.

‘It wouldn’t have cost them anything and would have made a big difference to her capacity to cope,’ recalls Sharren, 46.

It was one of many blows from a system that seemed to make no concession to Jen’s neurodivergence, eventually leading her to take her own life at home in October 2021, aged 17.

Today, Sharren has set up a charity, Jen’s Acorn, in her daughter’s honour, to guide schools in thinking ‘outside the box’ to help neurodivergent children. ‘I’ve learned that I can use the love I’ve got for Jen to fight for other kids,’ she says.

Her selfless dedication has seen her nominated for the Mail’s Inspirational Women Awards.

There are just two more days for you to nominate a woman who inspires you for the awards. For details, see the box below.

Sharren’s campaigning journey began when Jen’s struggles led to her feeling suicidal, aged just 14.

CAMHS, the NHS service for children with mental health problems, took four months to even put Jen on its waiting list for a psychologist. 

She remained on the list for around 18 months before being discharged because, the service concluded, her life wasn’t in danger. ‘We didn’t, at any point, get to see a CAMHS doctor. Never,’ says Sharren.

That’s despite the fact that Jen’s terrified parents repeatedly rushed her to A&E after she both tried to harm herself and talked about it. Each time she was sent home with no care plan in place.

Her death was all the more tragic because, as an inquest found last April, it was avoidable. 

The coroner’s withering 81-page report concluded: ‘There was a multi-agency failure to work together to ensure that Jen’s needs were met… [which] more than minimally contributed to her death.’

‘People not doing their job cost me my only child, my everything,’ Sharren says.

She recalls a lively girl who loved dancing, mermaids and climbing trees. Jen’s toy bear, Barney, sits on a shelf next to an urn with some of her ashes in the living room of the family home in Great Bookham, Surrey, where we talk.

The remaining ashes are in a cemetery ‘which is where I go to talk to her’, Sharren says.

Through tears, she describes saying goodbye in a chapel of rest, the teenager wearing her favourite black dress.

‘I held her hand, gave her the pink cuddly duck she’s had since she was a baby. You shouldn’t see your child in a coffin.’

Sharren, a former teaching assistant who now works for a homeless shelter, had long suspected her daughter was ‘different’. Eventually, aged ten, Jen was diagnosed with ADHD, and ten months later, autism.

Signs of depression began when, stressed about her year six SATs, Jen started self-harming, cutting off chunks of hair and biting her arms and hands.

Her GP referred the 11-year-old to CAMHS but a triage psychiatrist found ‘no moderate to severe mental health issues’.

Secondary school proved ‘overwhelming’, says Sharren. Her daughter was given no help to integrate with peers, who ‘were growing up quicker’. ‘She didn’t get invited to parties. People realised she was a soft touch so picked on her,’ she says.

Now, Jen’s Acorn aims to introduce small group activities in schools according to pupils’ interests, rather than their age. ‘Jen gravitated to younger children and would have been happier with them,’ says Sharren. ‘We don’t force colleagues to socialise according to age, why should it be any different for children?’

Jen’s troubles soon spilled over into home life. One evening in May 2018, Sharren found Jen asleep with potentially hazardous household objects in her bed.

A confused Sharren removed them and, the next morning, warned her daughter she could have killed herself.

‘She shouted, “That’s the whole idea, Mummy.” I was shocked,’ says Sharren. ‘I asked why she hadn’t told me she felt like that. She said she knew it would make me sad. I wondered where I’d gone so monumentally wrong.’

Sharren promptly informed the school, which referred them to CAMHS again. When a nurse asked Jen how likely she was to try to kill herself, Jen replied, ‘nine and a half out of ten’. 

‘She couldn’t leave the house. She was still suicidal,’ says Sharren, who kept anything Jen could use to harm herself locked in the garden shed, keeping the key under her bed, and sleeping ‘with one eye open’.

They struggled on. In 2019, Jen was practising whittling at Scouts when she dropped the knife. ‘She said, “Mummy, if I hold the knife I’m going to kill myself,” ’ says Sharren, who again rushed her to A&E.

Nurses from CAMHS advised Sharren to take Jen home after two days. ‘Literally, the discharge plan was [for me to] “sleep on her bedroom floor”,’ says Sharren. This she did, for three weeks, until Jen insisted she leave.

Private therapy, at £100 a session, was unaffordable and numerous terrifying visits to A&E followed. Then, in June 2021, on a video call with another CAMHS nurse, Jen, now 17, told him she was fine. Her mood was more positive and she had a new boyfriend.

CAMHS discharged her. It would prove disastrous. ‘I felt powerless to protest,’ recalls Sharren.

At 11pm on October 11, Jen called her mother from her boyfriend’s home. They’d had an argument. In the car, Sharren gently asked Jen if they should go to hospital. ‘She said, “There’s no point. They’ve never helped. They never will.”’

Her mother ‘soothed her to sleep. I stroked her back and her nose, like when she was small.’

Next morning, Sharren made an appointment with Jen’s GP. But that afternoon she was due to work, invigilating an exam.

‘My gut feeling was “don’t go”,’ she recalls, but Jen insisted.

Around 3pm, in the silence of the school hall, Sharren experienced ‘a horrible feeling, like a punch in the gut’.

Shortly afterwards a message came from reception. ‘The police were coming to pick me up. That’s when I knew Jen had died.’

Jen had been found in her bedroom by her grandmother, who had gone to check on her.

Today, Sharren is in talks with several local schools who are interested in Jen’s Acorn and hopes to roll out her scheme nationwide. She’s also advising Surrey County Council on its autism strategy.

Graham Wareham, chief executive of Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, said: ‘We remain deeply saddened by Jennifer’s tragic death.

‘While we gave care and consideration into delivering a person-centred therapeutic approach to meet Jennifer’s mental health needs, we acknowledge there were shortcomings.

‘The waiting times for psychology at that time were not what we wanted.’ He said these have been ‘significantly reduced’, and mandatory training had been rolled out to all staff ‘to provide safe, compassionate and informed care to autistic people .

‘The Trust has worked with Sharren to promote mental health support available for young people.’

Nonetheless, Sharren says her daughter was failed by a medical and educational establishment that ‘didn’t take into account that her brain is wired differently’.

‘They didn’t think to look deeper. That really hurts.’

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