Child trust fund or savings account?

[HensMum]

We opened a trust fund for DS as soon as we got the voucher and have been paying into it every month and also put some of his birthday money in. When we got the statement after the first year, it had lost a bit of money - not a huge amount, but still.
I'm going to open a bank savings account for DS for Xmas/birthday money so that it's accessible if needed and we were wondering whether it was a good idea to stop paying into the trust fund every month and put into savings instead.
DS is only 1 so we've got another 17 years for it to pick up and I'm not naive enough to expect it to make money every year but at the moment it just feels like we are gambling a bit of money each month and it would be safer in savings. It's not a huge amount of money but I feel like while we can afford to put something aside for DS it should be in the best place.
Any ideas?

mine has gone down too but I'm still paying into it. It looks poor now because interest rates & share prices are so low. But that also makes it the best time to buy shares as you'll get more shares for your money. The balance will look more healthy once the market improves again.

what we do with our DS is we've set up the CTF but we haven't put any money into that atall. all the money from his birth (from friends and family) was put into a savings account with a bank and he also has a savings bond with a building society for a large amount of cash he was given from his great gran. he isn't allowed to touch the bond til he is 18.

as saltcod says, it will all even itself out as time goes by. there's several years yet til they can touch the money so who knows what will happen in that space of time (in regards to CTF).
savings accounts are a safer bet, which is why we chose this option to pay into regularly rather than the CTF.