Deliver for ME: £4.5 million reasons to act now
As the 12th May is the first day the newly elected parliament will meet, #MEAction Scotland will be running an email campaign aimed at MSPs during ME Awareness Week, which this year runs from the 11th-17th of May. Last year, in the final budget of that parliament, the Scottish Government earmarked £4.5 million of recurring funding for ME and Long Covid services. The aim of this campaign is to tell new MSPs how they can support people with ME and deliver the services that are desperately needed in Scotland.
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#MEAction Scotland are asking everyone who can, to email their MSPs during ME Awareness Week to provide them with information about ME, tell their stories and stress the importance of ensuring the £4.5 million allocated to ME, Long Covid and similar conditions in the last budget is spent wisely. Everyone in Scotland is represented by eight MSPs. You can email all eight or as many as you feel able to.
To help you take action we’ve put together a template email, which you can find here. You can find your MSPs’ email addresses here.
In addition to emails from the community, #MEAction Scotland, as an organisation, will be emailing every MSP individually to introduce ourselves and our work. We will remind them of their party’s manifesto commitments around ME, highlight the particular needs of those severely and very severely affected and let them know that we will be inviting them to a parliamentary event later this year.
Last year’s funding award was the first time ME had ever been mentioned in a Scottish Budget - funding that #MEAction Scotland had campaigned for over a number of years. Following a great deal of hard work and attendance at party conferences by our volunteers, three of the major political parties in Scotland made manifesto commitments regarding services for people with ME. We at #MEAction Scotland will do everything in our power to ensure that these significant developments result in meaningful change for all people with ME in Scotland.
Let us know if you hear back from your MSPs at scotland@meaction.org.uk
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