Young Lives vs Cancer and Me
This guide is suitable for nine to 12 year olds, and anyone else who’s looking for information about Young Lives vs Cancer that’s easier to understand.
Read about…
- How Young Lives vs Cancer can help you
- How Young Lives vs Cancer can help your family
- Why do we write down information about you?
- Will we tell anyone else what you say to us?
- How to tell us what you think about our support
- How does Young Lives vs Cancer raise money?
- Information for parents and carers
- Print a printer-friendly version of this guide and download activities
This is Lyn. She's a social worker at Young Lives vs Cancer.
How Young Lives vs Cancer can help you
When you get diagnosed with cancer, you might have lots of questions. You might be wondering about your hospital visits, or being away from home if the hospital is far away. You may be thinking about when you can spend time with your friends or go to school again.
We can answer your questions and help you understand what to expect.
They team up with other people who care for you like doctors and nurses, as well as other specialists like play specialists and physiotherapists.
They’ll give your parents or carers a phone number and email address to contact us.
Here are some ways they can help:
- Explaining your illness, your treatment and what to expect. This might be in-person at the hospital or at home, online, or over the phone.
- Explaining what things mean in a way that’s easy to understand.
- Helping you and your family to be prepared. This might be by helping your family stay near the hospital or helping to organise who will look after other children in your family.
- Support with applying for treats and wishes to help put a smile on your face.
- Talking to your school and helping them to support you.
How Young Lives vs Cancer can help your family
We can help your family with:
Day to day support: We can help by
explaining difficult medical words, being there
to listen if you’re worried about something, and
helping your parents or carers sort out time off
work and arrange care for other children in your
family while you’re in hospital.
Money support: We can help your parents and carers with money for travelling to treatment and other things you might need.
A place to stay: We can help your family stay near to you when you’re having your treatment.
Why do we write down information about you?
We write down information like your name, birthday, address, contact details and information about your health to find you the best help. We also write down a record of the work we do with you and your family.
We use the information you give us to make sure you get the best support for you. This information can also be shared with different teams (like your hospital team or another charity) to help us make our support better. We’ll always try to ask you before we share any information about you.
We have to keep any information we have about you safe. If we don’t do this, we will be breaking the law.
We’ll keep your information for as long as we need it to help you, and usually for six years after this.
You and your parents or carers can find out more information about how we use your data in our Services Privacy Notice.
Will we tell anyone else what you say to us?
We work with nurses, doctors, teachers and play specialists at the hospital. Sometimes we’ll chat to them about how you are getting on.
Sometimes we have to share information with people who work at the hospital. This is to keep you and others safe. We will always do our best to let you know if we are going to speak to someone else about you.
A Young Lives vs Cancer Social Worker is a good person to talk to if you’re worried. If you tell your social worker something you want to keep private, they will always try to do that.
But if what you tell them makes them worry that you or someone else might not be safe, they can’t keep it a secret. They’ll need to tell other people about it so they can make sure you’re OK. They might need to tell your parents or carers too if it’s safe to do so.
How to tell us what you think about our support
This is how you can tell us:
- Talk to your parents or carers and ask them to let your Young Lives vs Cancer Social Worker know.
- Talk to your Young Lives vs Cancer Social Worker or someone else who works at Young Lives vs Cancer.
- Email supporter.services@younglivesvscancer.org.uk
- Call us on 0300 330 0803.
- Write to us: Central Supporter Engagement Team, Young Lives vs Cancer, Whitefriars, Lewins Mead, Bristol BS1 2NT.
- Send us a picture, photo, or recording if that is what helps you tell your story. You can send it to the address above, via email or by giving it to your social worker.
If you need more help sharing your feedback, please speak to your social worker and they will help you to make sure your voice is heard.
What we’ll do with your feedback
If you tell us something positive, we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. We’ll pass the message on to the people who have done good work so they feel proud and know to keep doing it. We will thank you for taking the time to tell us about what has gone well.
If you tell us something you are unhappy about:
- We will get in touch with you within three working days.
- Someone in charge at Young Lives vs Cancer will look into your feedback. They will tell you who they are and talk to you about it.
- We will try to tell you what we are going to do about it within 15 days. If it is very complicated it might take us longer. We will let you know if this is going to happen.
- We will tell you what we have found out and what we are going to do.
- We might have to tell other people at Young Lives vs Cancer about your feedback if they need to change to do better in the future.
- We might have to tell the NHS or your local authority (council) if the feedback involves them and it worries us.
What if you’re not happy with the plan to make things better?
Talk to us and we will ask someone else to look at your feedback again. This will be someone very important in the charity, or someone who is in charge of Young Lives vs Cancer Social Workers in your area.
How does Young Lives vs Cancer raise money?
Like other charities, we get money to do our work by fundraising.
Anyone can take part in fundraising activities. This means they do something to raise money for a cause. When they finish their activity, the people who sponsored them donate their money. We collect this together to pay for different types of help you and other young people with cancer might need.
Sometimes people we have helped in the past fundraise for us. They might do an activity or challenge and ask their friends and family to sponsor them.
Your parents or carers can show you some of the things people do by looking at our fundraising page.
Downloads
(Make sure you tell your printer to print this double-sided! Then when it’s printed, you should be able to fold it into a booklet with the pages in the right order.)
Information for parents and carers
We need to collect certain data to be able to provide services to your child. Read here, to learn how we use any personal data relating to yourself or your child, your information rights and how to exercise them in our Services Privacy Notice.
You can contact us at any time about how we process personal data and the types of data we store, or to withdraw consent by contacting us at 0300 303 5220 or emailing GetSupport@younglivesvscancer.org.uk.
We are regulated by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). You have a right to make a complaint with them at any time. You can find further details on their website.
If you have any questions about the content of this guide or are looking for more information, please speak to your Young Lives vs Cancer Social Worker or contact us.
Can you help us improve our services? We’d love to hear from you. Contact our Voice team.
