A bit about Jack and Jill…
Jack & Jill provide in-home nursing care and respite support for children up to the age of 6, with a range of neurodevelopmental issues including brain injury, genetic diagnosis and severe cerebral palsy. Many of the children they care for have undiagnosed conditions. Each hour of nursing care provided to families costs €18.
The aim of their service is to reduce some of the worries/difficulties that come when caring for a child with additional needs while also allowing families to take a break.
The Jack & Jill Children’s Foundation offer a child and family centred care service and believes that families should be supported to care for their children in their own homes.
We are fundraising from Caoimhe as a thank you, farewell, and wishing the foundation all the very best in continuing for many more years what they do so very well as we know…

On the 16th of October 2015 we welcomed our miracle into this world after much heart-ache and ill-health I had and her high risk pregnancy much of which I spent in hospital. Caoimhe was born healthy and well.
Everything was perfect and Caoimhe developed well and accordingly until August 2017 when we first noticed symptoms and had concerns, the appointments and hospital visits started then.
Fast forward to now Caoimhe has had two eye operations on both eyes, brain surgery for a growth that had grown over double in size from one MRI to another in under 12 months. She has been to Great Ormond Street in London twice, her genetic results show a very rare deletion which full significance of is still unknown until further genetics are done which have been hugely delayed due to covid 19. She has Jeavons syndrome a rare form of epilepsy as well as uncontrolled generalised epilepsy. She is waiting on a trial and more appointments, the neurological progression and deterioration in Caoimhes scans is still baffling doctors and still being classed as very rare.
Caoimhe has learning and other difficulties whether caused by her medical background or not we may never know.
The first year of appointments was manageable and we never could have known what it would progress to, in November 2018 Caoimhe and I were in 3 ambulances in 48 hours and from ringing work that morning to say I wouldn’t be in I never got to return since.
Caoimhe has great determination, she is very sociable and outgoing and tries her best to keep up with her peers. She has no day without pain, confusion, falls or frustration and no night without seizures but she gets up each day smiling and ready to live life to the fullest.
In 2019 we were referred to the Jack and Jill foundation after another long stay in Cork hospital, we met Mags our specialist nurse liaison who introduced us to our first nurse soon after, in March 2020 due to covid our nurse stopped initially which was safer and totally understandable, in June 2020 after I was taken to hospital suddenly very ill Mags landed a week later with a new nurse who we still have today, in the uncertainty and stress of me becoming unwell Jack and Jill became more invaluable than ever to us and there aren’t words enough to describe this fantastic foundation, every one of their staff are so nice and what they do is just outstanding.
We appreciate any donations for the Jack and Jill foundation either here online or in person we have a sponsorship card for them. For a hill so close to home it is not a walk we often do but this time Caoimhe is so excited and understands that she is raising money for Mags and her team at Jack and Jill.
So thanks so much for supporting us, after the hills and obstacles in life they helped us climb now we are actually climbing a hill for Jack and Jill.