Our core outcomes and how we help families

How are we helping families?

Wolo registered as a charity in March 2020. To date, Wolo have helped families with a huge variety of services. We work closely with local communities and other local charities to offer families a wealth of services to support them on their cancer journeys. 

We work hard to establish trusting relationships with every single family. We have developed a Holistic Family Assessment which adults in the family complete to highlight their thoughts, feelings and how we can best support them. We also encourage them to tell us how they feel Wolo could best support them on their cancer journey. We feel it is important to give them ownership of this, rather than us always telling them what we think it is they need. As we get to know them further, we are also able to suggest additional ideas of the ways in which we can help. Every family’s needs are completely different - and we support every family member - both adults and children. 

Wolo is continually evolving through these unprecedented times through training, collaboration, discussion and experience. We are always adapting or adding to the list of services we provide so that we can be sure we are meeting the needs of the families we support. We are working hard to develop relationships all across the county - so that we can get to the position where we have a local directory of services for various areas around Sussex to streamline procedures and support families as soon as we can.

We always try our best to support families any way we can. Our core hours are 9am-2.30pm Monday-Friday. Team Wolo will endeavour to respond to any enquiries as soon as possible. We are not an emergency service. If you have an emergency, please contact the appropriate authority.

Our Primary Work

Wolo’s primary work - providing a wealth of services to families affected by cancer, is our ongoing main project.

As the work is ongoing, and every family’s needs are different; we do not have a budget for individual families. We help them for as long as required. We use any unrestricted income we receive on our primary work. We budget this accordingly, and have created a variety of ‘pots’ to dedicate to different aspects of our primary work. 

Therapy - We have a huge variety of therapists who offer a huge range of services, from complimentary therapies such as massage, acupuncture or reflexology, to play therapists for children, physiotherapists and solution focussed hypnotherapists for all ages. Therapy varies in price according to type. Single sessions range in cost from £30 to £110. Some therapies are ongoing such as physio and acupuncture, others such as solution focused hypnotherapy run for 6-10 weeks (depending on the individual). We always seek to reduce the cost where possible by booking a block of sessions if required. We want to collaborate with local service providers, and encourage a healthy partnership by paying appropriately. We want them to want to work with us, so ask them to work out any reductions - to ensure they know their work is valued and important to us. We also use a variety of people/businesses who do the same thing, to help grow our pool of resources county-wide. 

Equipment/Resources - Purchasing resources or equipment that people need - it could be anything - things we have purchased in the past include an oven, de-humidifiers, medical equipment, mattress, bedding, toys, art and craft materials, mindfulness activities.

Services - Legal services (such as wills or LPA’s), childcare, regular cleaning, family treats, thermal imaging scans, driving lessons, transport, rubbish clearance, family photo shoots, fitness classes, nutrition services - the list is endless!

Support - Regular opportunities to talk and/or meet up with other local families going through a cancer journey. This links in closely with our wellbeing retreat project.

Our primary work costs on average £2000 per month. The number of families we are supporting is increasing all of the time, which means this monthly cost is also increasing.

Our primary work links to all of Wolo’s outcomes and makes a huge difference to all of the families we support.  It is this work that makes us different from so many other charities.