Breast Cancer Care

Free Helpline - 0808 800 6000
Text relay prefix – 18001

Our regular helpline hours are:

Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm
Saturday, 9am - 2pm

Our helpline is a free and confidential service. Staffed by experienced nurses and specially trained workers with a personal or professional experience of breast cancer, we offer information and support on any aspect of breast cancer or breast health. The helpline team can also tell you about services inside and outside Breast Cancer Care and help you make informed choices.

Whatever your situation or background

The helpline receives calls from people in many different situations and backgrounds, including:

• women and men with breast cancer or breast health concerns
• friends, relatives, partners and children of people with breast cancer
• health professionals.

To make the service as accessible as possible, we have access to an interpreter service for any caller whose first language isn't English. Textphone users can use Text relay to access the helpline by calling 18001 0808 800 6000 so that a Text relay operator can help us give you the information and support you need.

What can I expect?

• An experienced team to answer your questions
  Our helpline team has an excellent knowledge of breast cancer issues and receives daily updates on new developments in the field. The team comes from a variety of backgrounds, so callers get to talk to someone who has an understanding of the issues they are facing. They are able to talk about both the medical and emotional issues surrounding breast cancer and breast health and run through the complexities of different treatments to help you understand your options.
  
  
• An award-winning service
  Our helpline is accredited by the The Helplines Association. In 2005 we won an award from The Helplines Association for Innovative ways of valuing staff and in 2007 for our quality monitoring system. In 2008 we were awarded runners up for Best Helpline Involving a Diverse workforce.
  
  
• Find out where to get more support
  As well as talking about Breast Cancer Care’s services, the team can also show you where you can get more support in a way that’s appropriate for you, and find and understand information on the clinical issues around breast cancer.
  
  

Confidentiality

The helpline and Ask the Nurse is a confidential service. This confidentiality is maintained between clients and Breast Cancer Care, and the Helpline and ATN team in the first instance.

The Helpline team use your personal information (such as name and address) for the purposes of dealing with your enquiry. They will not pass on your details to anyone else without your express permission.

However, there are some exceptional circumstances where we may pass on personal information from callers, including in order to comply with the law or the nurses' professional code of conduct. For example:

• We believe a caller is at serious risk of harm, either from themselves or others
• We suspect a child may be at risk of harm
• A caller poses a serious risk of harm to others
• A caller threatens or abuses our staff
• A caller is deliberately misusing the service which prevents the service from being delivered to others
• We receive a court order requiring us to divulge information
• We are passed information relating to an act of terrorism

The Helpline will not store your personal information (unless it is to record that we have disclosed it in one of the exceptional circumstances listed above). Some demographic information is collected at the end of the call but this is stored anonymously in a way that cannot identify a living person.

Monitoring

Some calls may be recorded and monitored for training purposes. This is an important part of maintaining quality on the helpline. All calls are kept confidential to Breast Cancer Care and are destroyed securely after use.

Have a question but don't want to talk to someone?

Sometimes it is difficult to talk to someone in person about your breast cancer and breast health concerns, which is why we have set up a dedicated and confidentail email service to answer your questions.

Ask the nurse gives you information and support from a clinical perspective. Simply email any question – big or small – and you can expect a prompt reply from one of our specialist nurses. This service is available to anyone in the UK.

Find out more about this service.