The founder of a community cafe that provides mental health counselling is stepping down after 11 years at the helm.
Johnny’s Happy Place in Kettering, Northamptonshire, was set up in 2014 by the family of Johnny Mackay, who died aged 29 after years of drug and alcohol addiction and undiagnosed mental health issues.
His mother, Denise Mackay, 78, said she had decided to retire for health reasons, but the cafe, on Rockingham Road, would go on.
“Even though I didn’t want to walk away, I knew that I had to because I couldn’t put the energy and the effort into all the things that I did successfully,” she told Annabel Amos on BBC Radio Northampton.