Young Lives vs Cancer and Me

This guide is suitable for five to eight year olds, and anyone else who’s looking for information about Young Lives vs Cancer that’s easier to understand.

Read about…

Lyn sitting in an office. She's wearing a navy blue top and a Young Lives vs Cancer lanyard. She is smiling at the camera.

This is Lyn. She's a social worker at Young Lives vs Cancer.

How Young Lives vs Cancer can help you 

If you’ve just found out you have cancer, you might have lots of questions about what it means and what will happen next.

You might be thinking about:

  • Having treatment in hospital
  • Being away from home
  • When you can play with your friends
  • When you can go back to school

We can answer your questions and help you understand what will happen.

You might have already met a social worker from Young Lives vs Cancer on one of your hospital visits or talked to them on the phone. They’re trained to work with children and explain things clearly. They work with other people who care for you, like doctors and nurses.

They’ll give your grown-ups a phone number and email address to contact us.

Here are some ways they can help you:

  • Talking to you about your treatment and what it might be like
  • Helping you and your family to be prepared
  • Talking to your school and helping them support you.
Three children standing outside in the woods - two boys and a younger girl. They are wearing coats and jumpers. The boys have short brown hair and the girl has long blonde hair.

How Young Lives vs Cancer can help your family

We can help your family with:

Day to day support: We can help by explaining tricky medical
words, being there to listen if you’re worried about something, and helping grown-ups sort out time off work and arrange care for other children in your family while you’re in hospital.

Money help: We can help grown-ups 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.

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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.

Your grown-ups give permission for us to keep this information so we can help you the best we can.

We have to keep any information we have about you safe. If we don’t do this, we will be breaking the law. If you have any questions about this, you can ask your social worker.

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Will we tell anyone else what you say to us?

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 grown-ups too if it’s safe to do so.

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How to tell us what you think about our support

This is how you can tell us: 

  1. Talk to your grown-ups and ask them to let your Young Lives vs Cancer Social Worker know. 
  2. Talk to your social worker at Young Lives vs Cancer. 
  3. Ask a grown-up to help you send us an email at supporter.services@younglivesvscancer.org.uk.
  4. Ask a grown-up if you can call us on 0300 330 0803.
  5. Ask a grown-up to help you write to us: Central Supporter Engagement Team, Young Lives vs Cancer, Whitefriars, Lewins Mead, Bristol BS1 2NT. 
  6. 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. 

Someone from Young Lives vs Cancer will reply to say thank you if you are happy.  

What if you’re not happy with the plan to make it 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.

What is a charity?

Charities are set up to help people. To do this, we need money, and Young Lives vs Cancer gets money by fundraising. This means lots of people give us some of their money and we collect it together to pay for different types of help you and other children with cancer might need.   

Sometimes people we have helped fundraise for us. They might do an activity or challenge and ask their friends and family to sponsor them. Your grown-ups can show you some of the things people do by looking at this page.

Downloads

Print a printer-friendly version of this information (1.9MB pdf)

(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.)

Download our Home from Home colouring activity (62.9KB pdf)
Download our Packing for Hospital drawing activity (69.6KB pdf)
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Information for grown-ups

You can find more information about the support available from Young Lives vs Cancer here. 

We need to collect certain data to be able to provide services to your child. We’ll keep your information for as long as we need it to help your family, and for six years after this as standard.

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.  

Read here, to learn more 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.

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.