DORSET charities say it could take more than a year for their funds to recover after the Covid pandemic -with demand for their services reaching an all-time high.

Charities across the county have spoken out about the struggles they have faced during the pandemic and the impact it has had on their services.

And as we begin to come out of the latest restrictions, with life tentatively on the road to normality, groups and good causes are seeing an increasing number of calls for their services.

Sarah Lloyd, chief executive of Age UK Bournemouth, Poole & East Dorset, said: "Like many businesses our much loved community services had to cease. We very quickly transferred our efforts to creating a telephone hub and at the height of the pandemic we were receiving over 400 calls a day.

The charity is now in its recovery stages and has reopened most of its community services back up with its day centre, activities and lunch clubs reopening in February.

Sarah said: "As a charity we will be fully operational by March 2022, however this has had a detrimental effect on our income over the last two years and we have had to rely on using our reserves, we anticipate it will take a further year to fully recover."

Nathalie Sherring, chief officer at Dorset Race Equality Council, said: "We have experienced a lot more requests for support, a lot more people have had issues with being able to access services.

"Discrimination has a hugely negative impact on peoples mental health, so we are now seeing a lot of clients that have got very serious issues and I think that's going to continue unfortunately.

"We've been working from home and it has become absolutely relentless, like any charity we juggle with funding and the demand, which far outweighs the capacity of our charity."

Alistair Doxat-Purser, chief executive at Faithworks Wessex, said: "The Covid impact is far from over in terms of the economic challenges that so many are now facing – the work continues to help people build up their personal, food and relational resilience: here at Faithworks we want to continue to play our part in this."

As a smaller charity giving support to families dealing with terminal, life-limiting and chronic illnesses, Amelia's Rainbow has been forced to look at it's services and reassess what it offers and how it provides it. Like many charities it's income has been affected significantly.

The charity is down 50 per cent on budget and this has put increased pressure on the team who are still very committed to helping the 150 families they currently have on the books.

Farah Batchelor, manager at Amelia's Rainbow, said: "We have had to cancel so many opportunities and the uncertainty does take its toll both financially and mentally.

"2022 is our 10 year anniversary and we hope that this is a chance for the community to celebrate with us but also to grow and recover as we are learning from the pandemic."

A spokesperson from Access Dorset, a charity for disabled people, older people and carers, said: "Early on we established how important it was that we kept in contact with our communities, who were already isolated even before the pandemic and were likely to be severely impacted by the restrictions.

"A lot of people were isolating, so we reverted to doing our activities online via zoom."

The charity is now looking forward to resuming their activities in person at the community centre, hopefully towards the end of this month.