No matter what point you are in your journey with cancer, whether you’ve just been diagnosed, you’re mid-treatment or you’re in the middle of recovery, we’re here to offer you support.
From the moment you start your conversations with us, we’ll work in partnership with you to decide the best approach to help you move forwards positively with your life. Our Assessment Practitioner team will take the time to understand the challenges you are facing and explore how we may be able to support you.
That support will depend on your individual needs. This may range from financial assistance, advice, information and welfare support if you’re struggling financially following your diagnosis, through to online and telephone counselling if you’ve noticed an impact on your mental wellbeing, as well as digital rehabilitation and face-to-face rehabilitation or recuperation at one of our three centres.
We will also work with you to explore other avenues of support, signposting you on to specialist organisations where appropriate.
Our Welfare team could, for example, help meet the costs of hospital travel, parking and accommodation, should you meet the required financial criteria. They could also support you with claiming benefits and other statutory support, should you need it, as well as helping you to purchase any specialist equipment.
We also have My Fire Fighters Charity available to you, which has a huge library of self-help resources for you to browse, offering advice from our professional teams, as well as a Wellbeing Hub packed full of bitesize as well as long courses on a variety of topics.
On My Fire Fighters Charity you can also find a series of groups where you can chat to like-minded others and share ideas and experiences. Register below to discover all of this and more – and to access the Wellbeing Hub, go to the ‘Access Support’ tab at the top of the homepage:
Register for My Fire Fighters Charity
Meanwhile, we have gathered some handy resources below for you, should you wish to learn more about specific types of cancer:
- Bladder cancer: know the signs
- How much do you know about testicular cancer?
- Under the skin: know the signs of skin cancer
- How much do you know about ovarian cancer?
- Bowel cancer: know the signs
- How much do you know about cervical cancer?
- Breast cancer: know the signs
- A spotlight on men’s health
Here, one beneficiary shares how we supported her following her own cancer diagnosis:
Tess: “The Charity empowers you to approach things differently – it’s so impactful”
Tess Churchill, a Wellbeing Coordinator across both Surrey and East Sussex Fire and Rescue Services, was forced to spend time off work in 2012 following an ovarian cancer diagnosis.
“It came as a complete shock because I was quite a young age to get this form of cancer, I was 42 at the time,” she says. “I was found to have tumours on both my ovaries, the size of apples.
“It meant I had to take sudden time off work for about a year. Physically, I had to recover from major surgery, and mentally it was challenging because sadly I hadn’t had the opportunity to try for children at that point. I still very much had hoped that I’d be able to have my own children and sadly that was taken away from me.”
Tess reached out to us, having heard for years how we’ve supported colleagues of hers, and she was offered a stay at Harcombe House, where she was able to work through a series of tailored exercises to help with her physical strength, while taking time out to speak to our expert teams about her struggles with her mental health.
“The support the Charity offered me at the time was absolutely outstanding because I was physically having to recover, and that helped no end going to Harcombe for the two weeks to stay, but also emotionally I was in need of some support,” she says.
“Just the experience of being down in Devon with other fire and rescue service colleagues, whether they were family members of people that had served or operational crew or support staff, it was amazing.”
If you’re struggling with your health and wellbeing, we may be able to help you. Call our Support Line on 0800 389 8820, make an enquiry online or register for My Fire Fighters Charity and visit the ‘Access Support’ tab.
Try our bitesize and full online resources
We have a great range of shorter bitesize and up to six-week online courses available, with topics on managing stress to debt management, gambling, learning to change and more.
