The founder of the Laura Crane Youth Cancer Trust, Jacquie Roeder, has died aged 71 following her own fight with cancer.

Jacquie started the teenage cancer charity in 1996 in a bid to continue her 17-year-old daughter, Laura’s courageous fight against the disease and over the last 20 years it has helped thousands of young cancer patients.

Following Laura’s death, she was determined to make a difference to the lives of other young patients and through the charity’s support for youth cancer units in hospitals and through research, things have dramatically improved over the last two decades.

Over the years she received numerous awards for her dedication to Laura’s charity, including the BBC Look North’s Charity Champions Gold Award, a Paul Harris Fellowship by Rotary International, both the Home 107.9 FM and the Pulse Radio ‘Local Heroes’ awards. Jacquie received a Tesco Mum of the Year Award in 2006 in recognition of the astonishing contribution she had made in her daughter’s name to the fight against cancer in young people.

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The Examiner also honoured her work with the Person of the Year trophy and Huddersfield Pride Millennium Community Awards in 2000, and in 2016 listed her as one of the town’s most inspirational women for International Women’s Day.

Her dedication also attracted the support of celebrity patrons Zoe Lucker, Jack Dee and Catherine Tate, and Jacquie and the trust were the subject of a Yorkshire Television documentary, Out of Tragedy.

Jacquie, a grandmother from Edgerton, committed her time, talent and determination for many years to helping others, to ensure that Laura’s charity made a significant difference to their lives.

In an interview with the Examiner last year, as she battled cancer, she said: “The whole idea was to bring something positive out of such a tragedy.

Jacqui Roeder with a portrait of her late daughter, Laura Crane as the Laura Crane Trust reaches it's 20th anniversary.

“To have cancer is a horrible thing but to have it at that time of life when you’re on the verge of everything you’ve been waiting for and you’re chopped down like that is terrible.

“You undergo hair and weight loss and feel rotten. It was just awful to see.

“I was so proud of Laura and the way she coped with cancer and I loved her so much that I thought as a tribute to her I’d start the charity to make a better time for other kids going through it.

“Laura was such a caring girl and I just wanted to put something good back into the world.”