THE new chief executive officer (CEO) appointed at Oswestry's world-renowned children’s centre says his mission is to raise enough money each year to enable the offer of free treatment.

Johnny Wilkes started at The Movement Centre in Oswestry on Tuesday, and is now on a huge drive to raise the profile of Shropshire’s ‘hidden gem’ and attract more funding, which will help meet the vision of trustees to ultimately provide free treatment for patients.

The 55-year-old former Shrewsbury man has returned to Shropshire to take up the role and is now targeting businesses and also fighting to re-establish NHS referrals to The Movement Centre along with associated funding, something he hopes would help to reduce the financial burden on those undergoing treatment.

The centre, based at the RJAH Orthopaedic Hospital in Gobowen, operates a unique programme aimed at giving children the chance to gain more control of their movement and reach their full potential through Targeted Training therapy – the only therapy of its kind in the world.

“I saw The Movement Centre job advertised on Linkedin one Friday night about an hour before the closing date and it just seemed to tick all the boxes of what I was looking for – it just seemed to be the right job,” he said.

“My goal is to raise the profile – emphasise that Shropshire has a hidden gem here. We are providing a world class service and many people don’t even know about us, but this service comes at a cost and that’s a challenge.

“By reaching out to businesses we are hoping to make them think about us and the globally-renowned treatments we are providing and consider us when it comes to supporting charities and other groups with any funding.

“At one time our patients were referred by the NHS and with those referrals came funding.

"One of my challenges is to try and find out if there is any scope for them at the very least to continue to refer patients to us. The icing on the cake, of course, would be for those referrals to come with funding.

“Our treatment costs a lot of money and without NHS support it’s down to the parents, ourselves and charitable organisations to meet them.

“At the moment the challenge is getting patient numbers back up and trying to re-establish a kind of funding or referral linkage with the NHS, and also to assist the parents of the children that we treat in their fundraising.

“We need to maintain stability and run the charity on a business footing. We have taken two massive hits with the withdrawal of NHS funding and the effects of Covid which have had a massive impact on the finances of the organisation.

“The vision of the trustees is ultimately to provide free treatment.

“As it is, broadly speaking, we meet about a third of the costs but parents need to find £3,950 and there are organisations we can approach on their behalf to help with funding.

“But independent of that, we have a bill to meet in terms of raising our own funds to make up our third.

“We are contacted by families each week who do not have the funds to put their child through our programme and that is really difficult for us to see when we know we can make a difference to the life of that child and to the family as a whole.”

Mr Wilkes, once in the army, has also worked in the Middle East and for an organisation investigating war crimes before returning to Shropshire.

For more information visit www.the-movement-centre.co.uk