A foundation honouring a young skateboarder who took his own life has paired up with a UK suicide prevention charity to deliver training in schools and the community.
The Danny Cram Foundation was named after a 25-year-old who took his own life in December 2024.
His inquest last week found that there had been a series of missed opportunities to help him in the days before his death, including a short GP appointment where he was not offered mental-health support and a triage call with the crisis and assessment team where he was categorised as “routine” – despite having attempted to take his own life shortly before the assessment.
Eddie da Rocha, who helped set up the foundation in honour of his close friend, said it would be working with UK suicide prevention charity Papyrus. The two organisations are hoping to offer “awareness-raising and training appropriate for schools, businesses and organisations of all sizes”.
Mr da Rocha said: “We started the Danny Cram Foundation to remember his name and we wanted to take it upon our own hands to try to help the community with resources, with help, with community.
“The Danny Cram Foundation obviously is to remember Daniel, but it is also to bring people closer, to give them awareness of suicide, mental health and to try and bring more of a positive impact to Jersey.
“So hopefully, from such a bad turn of events that happened with Danny, we hope to be able to take it forward into a positive – whether it is saving lives, speaking to people, giving people a voice, helping the community with events or with many other things.”
In 2025, the Danny Cram Foundation held training sessions for barbers to learn to identify and address mental health with their clients in their chair.
Mr da Rocha highlighted that Jersey’s skateboard community had seen several suicides in recent years – a community that Danny had been an integral part of.
“The skate community did not get any support in the sense that no one actually reached out to anyone in the skate community. I think obviously both parties could have had more help and been spoken to a bit better,” Mr da Rocha said.
He added that he would like to see conversations or an event where mental health support is offered and signposted as they grieve members of their community.
“I don’t think we’ve had the right guidance for ourselves,” Mr da Rocha said. “I think the impact that it also has on us can also make us [deal] with depression and everything else, and I think that’s dangerous because obviously losing one of us is going to impact us so much.
“We grow up as skateboarders – we are together 24/7. Obviously it’s going to have a big effect on us. It’s basically our family, it is who we spend most our days with. You spend eight, nine hours a day down the skate park. One loss is is like losing ten.
“We just want the right help for everyone in the community.”
Potential volunteers or anyone who would like to donate or access training can contact the Danny Cram Foundation on their Instagram page or by emailing info@dannycramfoundation.com.
