Our Social Impact
Long Covid Kids: Helping families recover from the impact of Covid-19
In March 2020, Sammie McFarland and her then 14-year-old daughter contracted Covid-19. They both subsequently developed debilitating Long Covid. Sammie encountered numerous challenges accessing medical care for her daughter, so she launched “Long Covid Kids” to provide help and support for families, children and young people living with Long Covid and related illnesses.
Sammie, who is CEO of Long Covid Kids, says it was vitally important that the organisation quickly became a registered charity to give it credibility, as it was essential and pandemic-driven. “It was a crucial need at the beginning of the pandemic and then, as the pandemic has continued, it's become even more obvious that we have an absolutely vital role to play,” says Sammie.
She adds that there is a visitor to the Long Covid Kids website every 45 seconds, with more than 10,000 families registering with the organisation since its foundation, and some of these families have multiple children suffering from Long Covid.
The Charities team provided pro bono advice and assistance to Sammie to register Long Covid Kids as a charity with the Charity Commission in 2021.
families have already registered with the organisation since its foundation.
“It was quite a big piece of work trying to set out what they were going to do in the application, and then the Commission came back with additional questions and we helped them respond to these questions,” says Penelope Byatt of the Charities team at Charles Russell Speechlys. “It was at a time when the pandemic was affecting society very badly and the Firm took the view that this was something tangible we could do to try and help a group of people who had obviously been very adversely affected by Covid.”
Future proofing
Sammie says that “without the Charities team’s invaluable expertise it would have taken a lot longer to get registered. Penelope was able to ensure that we weren't wasting any time, which was crucial because of the urgency due to the pandemic. And secondly, she was able to make sure that we were future proofing the charity and setting it up in a way that would enable us to best meet the needs of the population we serve.” Sammie is now looking to extend the charity’s registration to the devolved nations and she’s been given additional support and guidance from Charles Russell Speechlys to help navigate this process. “Also when a couple of other little queries came up the Firm was able to provide reassurance that we wouldn't have been able to get elsewhere because we were a fledgling charity and we were too new to have funds to be able to pay for legal support. That gave us and the volunteers the assurance that we could continue doing the work that we were doing and make sure we're doing it to the best of our ability,” adds Sammie.
“Without support from Charles Russell Speechlys, we wouldn't have been able to get registered as a charity and start being able to support families, children and young people in the way that we have.”
Sammie McFarland, CEO and Founder, Long Covid Kids
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