Nicole Norton, Barefield, presents flowers to Minister of State for Disability Hildegarde Naughton during her visit to Clare Crusaders. Photograph: Brian Arthur
CLARE CRUSADERS CLINIC has received grant aid to the tune of €300,000 from the Department of Children, Disability and Equality.
Co-founder and managing director of the Clare Crusaders Clinic, Ann Norton says the allocation represented the first time she had been listened to in efforts to secure funding.
No annual funding stream has been received by the Clare Crusaders from the Government which has resulted in them having to fundraise each year for the past two decades to keep the doors of their clinic in Barefield open.
Minister of State at the Department of Children, Disability and Equality, Hildegarde Naughton (FG) confirmed an allocation of €300,000 for the Clare Crusaders during a visit to the county on Thursday. She outlined, “This will be for their ICT and equipment, they do provide free therapeutic supports for their service users, it will be money well spent and will go directly to families and children to help in the disability sector in Co Clare”.
Joining the Junior Minister at a special event at the Clare Crusaders Clinic was HSE Regional Executive Officer, Sandra Broderick, Clare TD, Joe Cooney (FG), Bishop Fintan Monahan along with service users and their families.
“For us it is a big day,” Ann Norton said of the funding allocation. “Celebrating twenty years of the Clinic is a massive achievement for all us parents. I’ve been involved from the very beginning, it started with my daughter Nicole who will be twenty eight next week, she has cerebal palsy and it hasn’t been an easy journey, we’ve had a lot of ups and downs”.
Ann recalled, “the Clinic started in my sitting room twenty years ago when we brought a therapist over from Hungary, there was sixteen parents involved and with a lot of determination we grew little by little until we found our home here in Barefield”. She was emotional when remembering her late mother-in-law- Mary Brodie who died in October and had worked in the office of the Clinic. Family is to the heart of the Clinic with Ann’s children giving up their summers to fundraise and organise summer camps.
She added, “This was never about my family, it was about a crusade led by parents, some of them determined to make a difference for their children”. She said, “I’ve been fighting for twenty years and I’ve never been listened to until now”.
Staff at the Clinic over the last two decades have been incredible the former two-time Mayor of Ennis stated, “your work is not easy but you keep going. I have volunteered to run this clinic for last 20 years, our Board of Directors work on a voluntary basis. It means every euro raised goes towards the children and services. When I see what we have done, I can say it is has been worth every hour”.
Norton continued, “this Clinic is more than a building, it is a lifeline and it is a sign of people refusing to give up. Unless you see it you actually don’t believe it”.
Junior Minister Naughton outlined that the support on the ground for the charity is “so significant”. She stated, “Coming here today and meeting the team, seeing the excellence and culture within organisation is very impressive”. She was presented with a bouquet of flowers from Nicole Norton.
Significant waiting list for children disability network teams was acknowledged by the Junior Minister who praised the “instrumental” work of Clare Crusaders to help improve waiting times. She said the allocation of €300,000 would take some of the fundraising pressure off the group while Norton committed, “we will spend the money very wisely and shrewdly”. It is estimated that it costs up to €400,000 per annum to run the Clinic.
Speaking to the media, the Junior Minister outlined why Clare Crusaders was awarded funding. “They are taking in students who are training to be an occupational or speech therapist here in their service and giving them training as part of a clinical placement, they really are leading the way, I want to commend the organisation, the charity and all the volunteers, we have the Bishop Fintan Monahan who runs marathons with the local community every year to raise funding for this organisation, that is why I wanted to come here to make the announcement of €300,000 to acknowledge the hard work and help them continue this really hard work”.
She added, “the HSE is with me today, they have really good relationships with the Clare Crusaders because they are helping us deal with our waiting list and families waiting for therapeutic sessions for their children but when we fund organisations we have to make sure it is evidence based and that is why I’m meeting different groups, parents and families to get that lived experience of what the issues are on the ground and making sure we are putting the funding where it is needed on the frontline where families, children and adults with disabilities directly”.
Quin’s Ann Enright was among the speakers in Barefield. Her daughter Adah has cerebral palsy and needs 24/7 care. She recalled, “I hoped we’d survive and develop, I hoped someone would listen to her story and understand, I hoped for a better future for Ava, then along came Ann Norton and the Clare Crusaders, how lucky were we to find Ann on our doorstep, we got help and support, cuppa and a chat, we got our community, Adah got her opportunity to thrive”.
She expressed her gratitude to Ann’s hard work and vision and to the band of volunteers who run the roads of Clare weekly for the Clare Crusaders, “our volunteers wear our children’s names on their back because they run a marathon for our children who have to run a marathon every day”.
