Re-established in 2004 by two of the current trustees whose own family members have Multiple Sclerosis.
Over the years the centre has grown in membership and awareness from 30 members to currently over 500. This has been achieved mainly through word of mouth and our community fundraising engagement sharing leaflets and speaking to people face to face with our members sharing their experiences. We share information and support to all the MS societies branches across the North West and have in the past held joint events to raise awareness of our centre and the therapies on offer. We have strong links with MS nurses based at Salford who cover the entire Greater Manchester city region, along with parts of Lancashire and Cheshire, with a number of them visiting our centre.
After many years of renting premises to run our centre we made the decision that we wanted to own our own premises. This making more sense for the long-term sustainability of our centre investing some of our reserves rather than the money we would spend on rent over the coming years. This provides our members security to know we will be around to support them for decades to come.
After much hard work and fundraising for Phase 1 we were very proud to move into our very own premises based in Salford in late 2023. We couldn’t have done this without the help of our supporters, funders and of course our members. Our centre is a work in progress as we have taken on a significant project, but we have started to settle into our new home and have taken occupancy of the ground floor, re-establishing our drop-in centre, electromagnetic bed and our oxygen chambers. This has allowed our members to start to access face to face support and some therapies again. We are also offering some of our services, like classes, remotely until we are ready to open up our upper two floors. Our members and volunteers have even started creating our garden planters which adds a lovely feature to our dedicated car park.
We still have a long way to go, but our lifts are fully installed ready and waiting to transport our members to the upper two floors once we have raised sufficient funds to complete our internal building works. In our next exciting development Phase 2, we are recreating our dedicated gym with specialist equipment, a physiotherapy suite, fitness studio, counselling room and therapy rooms. So, our fundraising continues and everyone is working really hard to secure the necessary funding. Come and visit us and see how wonderful our ground floor is and get a glimpse into how fantastic our centre is going to be once fully opened.
Our 26 volunteers 3 paid staff and several ttrustees bring our Centre to life – from delivering our services, to making sure our building is accessible to all our members and keeping everything running day-to-day.
We are honoured to have Award Winning Volunteers supporting the Centre and were delighted to see them recognised in 2022 when a selection received the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. This is the equivalent of receiving an MBE.
The Centre is supported by a Board of Trustees.
Our diverse team works hard to make our Centre a place where everyone can be themselves, feel comfortable, make new friends and play a part in our community.
Our building has been purposely designed to allow people with all abilities to engage and participate. Our ground floor is fully accessible with on-site parking, drop-in centre, disabled friendly toilets, level access throughout, accessibility into our oxygen chambers, wet-room shower etc. Our two wheelchair accessible lifts are already installed, awaiting completion of our remaining two floors. Once open these additional floors will bring therapy spaces, gym and exercise suites, counselling rooms and more.
We will continue to ensure accessibility is a core principle across all areas.
We are a small charity reliant upon fundraising and donations. We receive no government investment. All funds secured are reinvested into making our centre the best it can be.
To deliver Phase 1 of our ambitious programme we raised £1.6 million.
We are now fully focused and committed to raising the funds to complete Phase 2 of our ambitious vision which will see the Centre fully opened and a much needed return to our full programme of facilities, services and support for our members.
To deliver and complete our vision we need to raise a further £0.5 million.
Fundraising for Phase 2 of our building project is well underway, but we still have a long way to go. This will see us opening our second and third floors which will see the return of some critical therapies, studio spaces for classes and a fully-accessible gym that are currently unavailable to our members.
We are very proud of what we have achieved already, which has allowed our members to return to the Centre, but are looking forward to providing our full range of services, in an even better and more extensive way than previously.
The more people who can help us on this mission, the quicker we can get there. We really need your help, no matter how small you may think the contribution you can offer is. Help us be there.
