Billie Bainbridge was a 5 year old little girl with an inoperable brain tumour. She lost her fight against this cruel disease and died peacefully at home on 1 June 2012.

The Billie Butterfly Fund was set up to raise funds for her treatment. In accordance with the terms of her Trust, money which was not used for her treatment is being given to research into child brain cancer in the UK.

Billie was an exceptional and brave little girl. In her name we now want to raise more funds for child brain tumour research. Brain tumours are the biggest cancer killer of children in the UK but research is woefully underfunded. Please help us to raise money so that children like Billie have a better chance of beating this terrible disease.

ABOUT BILLIE: Until the start of June 2011, Billie was just like any other lively 4 year old child, full of life and looking forward to starting school in September.

Then without warning she began to have difficulty swallowing, her eyes started drooping and she became wobbly on her feet. Within two days she had a brain scan and was diagnosed with the most serious type of brain stem cancer. This cancer is inoperable because the tumour is where the most vital functions are located. Radiotherapy is used to shrink the tumour but frequently it starts to grow again more aggressively and survival rates are poor.

As if this wasn't bad enough, Billie's mother Terri was diagnosed with breast cancer a few months earlier and had surgery to remove a large tumour.

Apart from radiotherapy there is no other treatment available in the UK for Billie's type of brain tumour. So after talking to cancer charities and to other families with the same experience, and an exhaustive search for all possible treatments anywhere in the world, many of them experimental, the decision was made to seek treatment in America.

After 5 weeks in the USA in autumn 2011, Billie continued her treatment at home in the UK monitored by her own doctors.

Any experimental treatment attracts widely different views and the family knew there were no guarantees, but were not prepared to sit back and do nothing. There was a chance that it might improve her chances and it might well have helped to extend her life. However, in the end she could not beat the dreadful statistics for this sort of tumour. Billie died peacefully at home on 1 June 2012, nursed to the end by her devoted parents Sam and Terri, and surrounded by her family. She was a special, greatly loved, brave little girl, and will never be forgotten.

Please donate what you can to support research into this terrible disease.

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