Stockport ME Group has not changed its name since we officially became a charity in the late 1990s. Since that time the name “ME” is most commonly written as “ME/CFS” but we never felt it was worth changing the name for that reason alone.
We have always had a larger area of coverage than just “Stockport” and welcome people from where ever they come from. We tend to try not to directly compete with groups in other areas like Bury & Bolton where another group exists but we are never going to turn someone away.
Currently we have about 40% of our members in Stockport with the rest mainly in Greater Manchester and East Cheshire with 4-5 in other parts of the country. Whilst we have run cinema trips and the odd social in Parrs Wood and Didsbury most of our Face to Face events have been in Stockport.
Were there people in say Manchester or East Cheshire who wanted to meet face to face as long as there were people who could organise it and support it then this is something we would be quite possibly open to.
It was clear in some recent engagement work we were doing in partnership with Greater Manchester NHS that there were quite a few people who didn’t realise that we were not “just for Stockport” and also that we are not just for people with ME but also Long Covid. We haven’t done a recent stocktake in either official current members or the wider group of people who are linked to our group via email lists, our Facebook group etc but it is my estimate that about 40% of “our membership” in both meanings have Long Covid either instead or as well as ME/CFS. We have also run a range of specific events targeted at Long Covid such as Operatic Breathing.
We are considering changing our name to Stockport ME/CFS and Long COVID Group and are interested to know what people’s thoughts are. It would require a formal name change ( probably at the AGM in November) were we to go ahead with this but for the moment we are just sounding out thoughts and opinions. We are also looking at changing our branding so it is clearer that we are inclusive of a wider geography than just Stockport and also that we are a peer support charity working with Long Covid, ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia.
