Every child should have music, charity says

A charity set up in memory of a music-loving girl who died from cancer is marking 30 years of helping ill and disabled children.

Jessie's Fund was named after nine-year-old Jessie George, from York, who died in May 1994 after she was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

Inspired by Jessie's love of music, her mum, Lesley Schatzberger, set up the charity after her daughter's death to offer music therapy to children in hospices across the UK and it has since funded or part-funded more than 10,500 sessions.

Ms Schatzberger said: "It's all about communication. Music is the best way to communicate if words are difficult."

Jessie was surrounded by music throughout her childhood, as both of her parents were musicians.

She was "musical, bright and played the violin and the piano and she wanted to be in an orchestra eventually", Ms Schatzberger said.

"She was full of fun. She loved to be a little bit mischievous and was full of character."

When Jessie received her diagnosis, the music community rallied around the family to fundraise for treatment in New York, but Jessie died within a matter of weeks and never made it to the USA, Ms Schatzberger explained.

"Of course, we didn't get to use the money for its purpose," she said.

"After she died, we just knew the money that had been raised would be used to help children through music."

Wanting to channel her grief into something positive, Ms Schatzberger set up Jessie's Fund in 1995.

When she started, there were only eight children's hospices in the country, none of which had experienced music therapy.

Today, there are 54 such hospices and the charity has provided musical instruments and therapy at almost all of them.

Ms Schatzberger said: "There are such a broad range of children we work with, from verbal children who have got problems due to non-neurotypical ways of thinking to children who have got multiple disabilities and can't talk at all."

Through playing instruments together, children and their families could connect and open up a "whole new world of communication", she added.

Thirty years on from the charity's creation, Ms Schatzberger said the plan now was for Jessie's Fund to help promote music therapy in hospitals and schools for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, as well as continuing its work in hospices.

"Every child should have music, and every child with special needs needs it even more," Ms Schatzberger said.

"We're not going to quite conquer the world, but we will work towards it for many years to come."

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