Losing a child is possibly the worst thing anyone can go through

Actors Sarah Parish and James Murray have raised more than £5million since losing daughter Ella-Jayne... and now their inspirational kids' charity is going nationwide. By Margaret Hussey

- Margaret Hussey

WHEN actors Sarah Parish and James Murray lost their baby daughter Ella-Jayne, it changed their lives irrevocably.

Ella-Jayne was just eight months old when she died in 2009 from a congenital heart condition. And Cutting It and W1A star Sarah, 57, says it altered the couples perspective on life.

“I think when something that awful happens to you, nothing is ever going to get as bad)’ explains Sarah. “We've gone through the worst thing that anyone could go through and survived, and that in itself is quite an empowering feeling. In a way, I think it makes you as a person - that kind of grief”

In 2014, the couple set up The Murray Parish Trust in Ella-Jayne’s memory, helping seriously ill children, in and around Hampshire where they live, and at University Hospital Southampton, where she was treated in the paediatric intensive care unit.

To date, the couple have raised more than £5million and now they are rebranding the charity to Imagine This = with a goal to help every seriously ill child with their mental health and emotional needs, nationwide, by 2035.

The couple say they experienced first hand how hard it is when your child is seriously ill - while all the medical needs are looked after, sometimes the emotional support isn’t there.

“And that's not the NHS's fault” says Sarah.

Husband James, 50, agrees. “It’s a really lonely, desperate time, when you have been given tragic, life-changing news about your child” says the actor, Prince Andrew in The Crown. “But at the end of the day, when there is no room at the hospital and you are far away from home, you have to go and break down in a tiny, airless room, then rinse and repeat the next day.”