A FERMANAGH stroke survivor has spoken out about the lack of support for the charity sector in Northern Ireland during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Stevie McAloon, Fermanagh Stroke Association, was disappointed with the lack of Government support for charities during the pandemic.

“Our shop has been closed since Boxing Day, and it is our main [source of] income because we can’t do any other fundraising; we have no income whatsoever.

“We still have to keep paying our rent for the shop; we applied for funding for the rent but got turned down.

“We need the fundraising to support the group for all of its activities because it is a very active group with all of their events keeping [members] going every week.”

The shop was used to raise funds for support services for stroke patients.

Stevie explained how important these services are to the group: “The pandemic hasn’t helped the mental health and wellbeing of our service users.

“They’re all very anxious to get back to using the whole services, but there is nothing we can do about that at the minute.

“The group activities were the main things for getting out of this [stroke recovery]; they [members] can’t exercise, which is the main thing for stroke [recovery], and you can’t do that except for walking, and some of our members can’t walk.

“We would have hosted chair exercises for them, and things like that, which has all ceased.”

The group took part in a variety of activities, as Stevie explained.

“Crafts, arts, visiting the Share Centre in Lisnaskea, [or going] swimming – you name it, they were doing it! Anything that was available, we were doing.”

The money raised from the shop was vital to funding these supports for patients who had suffered from strokes.

Surplus money totalling £8,500 raised by the Stroke Association shop between summer and December, 2020, was donated to the Ward Five Stroke Unit at the South West Acute Hospital (SWAH), which will be used to purchase necessary equipment.

Charity shops will have to wait to open in line with retail services, so it will be difficult for Stevie and his team to fundraise for their service.

However, Stevie is available to collect donations. He said: “I’m happy to collect any donation that people have if they contact the shop, but hopefully, we will be inundated with stuff when we open.”

One other project the group are heavily involved in is the Save Our Stroke Unit campaign, to save the stroke unit at the SWAH.

When asked for an update on the campaign, Stevie said: “The last we heard was that [Health Minister] Robin Swann wasn’t going to take on anything else until this [Covid-19 pandemic] was all over, so there has been no more word about the stroke unit.

“They have come back to us about our forms [ the submission of petitions, pre-pandemic], and we were down the list.

“The whole thing has gone quiet, and we don’t know what has happened on it. We will wait and see what happens when the pandemic eases off a bit,” he added.