Charity Wishes: “Not every child is having their best start in life”

The comments came from Fiona Vacher, the Executive Director of Jersey Child Care Trust, as she opened up to Express about the highlights and challenges of 2024, and her hopes to be able to support every child who needs it in 2025…

What have been the highlights of 2024?

Opening our new nursery in six weeks! Seeing how quickly our team responded to opening our new nursery, Play and Learn at d’Auvergne astounded me – in six weeks they cleared and cleaned the space, recruited an amazing new team, bought all the toys and resources, wrote the policies, became a Registered provision and welcomed the first children and parents in.

Since opening in October, each of my subsequent visits have shown me the incredible impact that a good quality early years experience can have for children in a matter of weeks.

What has been the greatest challenge?

We know that our earliest years are our most formative but that not every child is having their best start in life. Not being able to help every child who needs us has been particularly challenging. In July this year, 10 children with additional needs missed out on going to nursery because there simply were not the places available.

And what is on your charity’s ‘wish list’ for 2025?

We want every child to have their best start in life and with the generous support of others we can make this happen.

We have some incredible supporters around us making what we do possible and next year, we want to help every single child who needs us.

Find out more about the work of the Jersey Child Care Trust here.