How To Join Your Online Community
You can view your online community pages anytime but if you’d like to join in with the conversations or start your own, you’ll need to log in or create an online account. It’s free to join, all you’ll need is an email address and a username of your choice.
Community Guidelines
Support
We encourage all our members to remember that everyone’s experience is unique and cancer affects every area of life, for both the person living with cancer and their loved ones.
Support can come in many ways, and emotional and physical support is at the heart of everything we do at Wessex Cancer Support. We ask that you give and receive support when appropriate for you in a safe, empowering and respectful way. We encourage community members to only share what feels comfortable and remember to maintain a level of anonymity online, never sharing your contact details publicly.
Inform
We have spent the last 40 years devoting ourselves to being a trusted source of cancer information for local people. From prevention and early detection, to living well with and beyond cancer, we’re committed to providing clear, accessible information for everyone. We encourage our community members to share their experiences in order to help others too.
We encourage you to start conversations about topics where you want to hear others’ advice, however if you have an in-depth medical question, be aware that this is not a substitute for speaking with your GP, consultant or cancer care team who will always be able to tailor the advice to your own individual situation.
Community
Our door is always open. Living with cancer is difficult, it can feel isolating and result in a loss of confidence. We understand it can be difficult to stay positive and maintain working, or a social life. We are a community of local people who understand how you feel and will be right by your side.
We encourage all our community members to treat others with respect and listen without judgement. If you are unable to see someone else’s perspective on a particular conversation, we would encourage you to listen and not contribute with anything that could be abusive or disrespectful.
Thrive
We would like to encourage our group members to be open about what has helped them through their experiences, and what they are finding difficult in order that we can empower and support each other through the challenges. We encourage group members to make the most of the online community, test out the conversations, blogs, online courses and commit to finding out more about the support we may be able to offer offline in your local community.
We maintain the right to remove conversations and/or replies
Our top priority will always be to make sure that the group remains a safe space for all our group members, therefore we may edit or choose not to publish any conversation, reply or blog post that contains any of the following:
- Contains disrespectful, discriminatory or derogatory remarks
- Contains advice or content that we believe is damaging, unhelpful or distressing to others
- Contains links considered inappropriate or unhelpful
- Contains offensive or nonsensical language
- Promotes personal beliefs in a way that is disrespectful of the choices of others
- Infringes the privacy of individuals or service providers
- Advertises products, services, events or research
- Makes any reference to specific prescription medication names and/or dosages or seeks medical advice
- Includes personal information such as images clearly displaying your face, full names, phone numbers, locations, postal or email addresses; or encourages the sharing of such details
- Describes or encourages violence, suicide or other activity which could endanger the safety or wellbeing of others
- Contains references to edits or moderation
Where possible, you will be informed that you have breached one of these restrictions and that your conversation or reply has been removed.
We also recommend the following organisations for support:
Samaritans: 24-hour emotional support for anyone struggling to cope
tel: 116 123 (freephone)
email: jo@samaritans.org
MIND
Mind info line: 0300 123 3393 (open Mon-Fri 9am-6pm)
email: info@mind.org.uk
CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably): Provides information services, listening and support for men at risk of suicide
Tel: 0800 58 58 58
NHS Direct/111: (Non-emergency medical help and advice for people living in England and Wales)
Scotland and England: 111
Wales: 0845 46 47
Your local GP