One of Centre’s First Clinicians Blazes Trail for Providing Care for Kids Close to Home
Val Vickers was one of the first staff members to work at Five Counties.
Val Vickers counts herself fortunate to have worked 42 years at Five Counties Children’s Centre, even though she’s lost count of how many children she helped over that time.
“Five Counties is a huge part of my life,” says Val, an occupational therapist and one of the first clinicians hired by the Centre in 1975 – the year it opened in Peterborough. “I can remember saying to my own kids, ‘you need to find a job where you love what you do because life is so much easier when you actually get paid to do something you enjoy doing.’ And I did.”
As Five Counties marks its 50th anniversary in 2025, trailblazers like Val can be credited for laying the foundation of the work Centre staff do today enhancing the independence, and well-being for kids with physical, developmental and communication needs.
In the early 1970s, Val worked at the old Peterborough Civic Hospital. She knew that a children’s centre was being built in Peterborough and, excited by the possibility of working with kids, successfully applied to join the fledgling Five Counties. She started in July 1975, staying at Five Counties until her retirement in 2017.
In its early days, the Centre mainly supported children with physical disabilities. With few employees and a smaller focus, Five Counties provided more frequent and hands-on therapy to a smaller group of kids. This changed, Val notes, especially as Five Counties staff began working in schools and dealing with children who had more diverse needs.
Wait lists for service also became a problem – something that persists to this day.
Providing occupational therapy support to “a lot of wonderful kids” was only part of Val’s work; at times, she would have to educate others about children in her care. “I can clearly remember one mother saying that we’d really helped her understand that what her physically-challenged child had wasn’t a sickness,” Val recalls. “It was a lifelong issue that she and all of us worked together on so that her child could succeed.”
Lessons also extended to schools, especially in the late 1970s as children with disabilities were integrated into classrooms. “Some of the questions we got from school staff were horrifying because they didn’t understand the kids,” Val says. “We were asked at one school if you could catch cerebral palsy. It just broke my heart to know that they were petrified of this little six-year-old boy we were trying to integrate into the program.”
In the late 1990s, Five Counties opened a new site in Cobourg to better serve families in Northumberland County – and Val become site manager there. The decision was difficult, as moving to a supervisory role meant she could no longer treat kids.
Whatever her role, Val notes Five Counties staff “were like family” and were always supported in their continuing education efforts by the Centre. In her time at Five Counties, she says one of the best changes came when a family-centred approach to care was adopted – one in which parents/caregivers have a more significant role in their child’s treatment journey.
After 50 years, Val can’t imagine the community without Five Counties – nor her own life without it. “There were ups and down and some hard spots,” she notes, “but in the end, just knowing you’d helped kids and families be successful was a real joy.”
Category: General News