A MOTHER has expressed her outrage after a charity box to raise funds to help her daughter walk through physiotherapy was stolen.

Seven-year-old Felicity Watkins, from Newport, has acute motor axonal neuropathy (AMAN), which is a variant of Guillain–Barré syndrome, caused by her catching a virus when she was two years old in December 2015.

Felicity, who has wanted to be a ballerina all her life, was paralysed by this and needs expensive physiotherapy - at nearly £100 an hour - to help her learn how to move and walk again.

Due to debt her family have numerous charity boxes, with Felicity's face on, including one at a Newport fish and chip shop which has raised funds for Felicity for more than a year.

Felicity's grandparents noticed the box was missing earlier this month.

South Wales Argus:

One of the charity boxes to raise funds for Felicity. Picture: Frances Watkins

There is also an ongoing JustGiving page, set up two years ago, to raise money for Felicity.

Felicity’s mother, Frances Watkins, said: “I’m gutted, because the pot has her little face on so whoever stole it knew they were stealing from a little girl.

“Whoever you are I hope you realise you have stolen from one of the strongest, bravest and most determined little girl anyone will ever meet.”

Felicity lives with her parents, Frances and Alec Watkins, and three brothers: nine-year-old Dylan, two-year-old Albert, and one-year old Douglas.

She has defied the odds after her parents were told she would never move, eat, speak or breathe unaided.

South Wales Argus:

Felicity Watkins. Picture: Frances Watkins

She had open heart surgery, at Bristol Children's Hospital, when she was just four years old and recently had a feeding tube fitted in her stomach.

“Since going to physiotherapy at Morello Clinic in Newport, Fliss has come on amazingly, both physically and mentally," added Ms Watkins.

"She has done things me and my husband thought we would never see, like standing and pulling herself up into a sitting position,

“She can sit herself up using her feet as hands and can write with her right hand with support; plus she is eating two meals a day."

South Wales Argus:

Felicity Watkins before donating her hair to Princess Trust. Picture: Frances Watkins

Her classmates at Jubilee Park Primary School, in Rogerstone, don't see Felicity as disabled and don't mind that she doesn't speak around her friends - a result of her anxiety disorder selective mutism.

Felicity currently spends four hours a day off her ventilator and has been working on speaking, off her ventilator, using a passy muir or speaking valve.

A respiratory professor who met Felicity in 2015 told the family he believes in a few years, and with hard work, Felicity could get rid of her tracheostomy.

Ms Watkins said that the knowledge that whoever stole the charity box knew they were stealing from a little girl 'hurts the most' but added:

"Felicity is always thinking of others first - when I told her what happened she said 'maybe they needed the money more than I did.'"