Trelya – which means ‘change’ in Cornish – provides positive interventions into the lives of the hardest to reach children and young people in West Cornwall.
The new nursery will open in the charity’s own multi-use centre in Penzance in January 2017.
It will aim to provide an extension of Trelya’s approach with children, young people and their families from severely disadvantaged areas across West Cornwall.
The project will be called Skylar and will deliver a unique programme to children born into complex, chaotic family environments including domestic abuse and substance misuse to tackle poor parenting and low educational standards, as well as cyclical, generational poverty.
Cat Keene, director of programmes and operations, said, ‘We could be the first project that works with disadvantaged young people from babies to 20-years-old. This could make a huge difference to ending the cycle of generational poverty and social inclusion.
‘We recognise the critical role early years care and education can play in a child’s development and the importance of good practitioners, and want to deliver the best in early years’ practice to babies and young children that need it most, who would simply not be able to access it otherwise.’
The charity has started recruiting staff for the new nursery.
‘We are interested in hearing from practitioners who think they could make a real difference,’ Ms Keene said. ‘The perfect team could consist of people hugely experienced in management or with years of hands on nursery expertise, it could be people just starting out with their qualifications and people with no experience in areas of poverty and disadvantage.
‘We’re not necessarily looking to create childcare provision in the mainstream sense, this is something more. It is about ensuring these children are meeting their social, health and developmental milestones.
‘What we want to do is help these children be considered suitable for mainstream provision by the time they are three- or four-year-olds, so that by the time they start school even though everything in their life indicates they should be disadvantaged, they are not.’
Founder Sam Fitzpatrick said, ‘Our family work is rapidly expanding as we are the only organisation that these marginalised, hard to reach people are prepared to engage with.
‘In the communities we work with, we find babies are not forming positive attachments with their carers, are not reaching developmental milestones and are developing negative patterns of behaviour – and most importantly are failing to thrive, socially, educationally or physically.
‘Skylar will be delivering the EYFS framework in a flexible and innovative way that responds to children as individuals. Nurturing them through the critical early years we will give these children the care and support they need to develop and thrive.’
