It's in the Bag Cancer Support

About Us

2,400 men are diagnosed with the disease every year and of those 240 are in the SW. We have 3 aims; Support, Awareness and Survival. What that means is we provide hands on support to men and their families, that could be face to face or in monetary grants. We raise awareness of the disease with the ultimate aim to save lives. Testicular Cancer is the most common cancer in young men 15 ? 49 years, however it is 98% curable when detected early, so we aim to do that. Survival is all about giving men the opportunity to give back and celebrate their lives, by either doing some volunteering with us or fundraising.

The charity has been running for 13 years and all our work is carried out by volunteers.

Support:
Our Grants: We provide travel grants for those who have to travel further than 10 miles for treatment and/or surveillance. The treatment centre is Bristol, so men in Somerset have to travel to Bristol for all visits. Young men do not qualify for financial help. During the pandemic and beyond we have continued to give out grants and now during the fuel and cost of living crisis this service is needed much more. We provide Complex and Palliative Care Grants to those who are within the 2% who do not survive. This provide money for a wedding, trip or small break. Some men unfortunately die of the disease and have not considered funeral costs. We provide up to £1500 towards funeral costs, which has proved to be invaluable.

In addition, we do offer funds and videos to give support at diagnosis, through treatment (Chemotherapy Support Packs) and during survival. Health and wellbeing is very important after treatment and we work with the BTCS to provide this.

Awareness:
We have invested in this area of our aims, in our website, videos all of which are signed and have subtitles. We have our brilliant KEEP CALM AND CHECK YOUR BALLS campaign and our MATCH FIT for ball sports. Out self checking videos have had a huge impact on our campaign, being the first in the UK to be signed with BSL and have subtitles. The animated features have been noted to suit those with educational and learning disabilities.

We have focused on Taunton and Somerset as we stage the only Testicular Cancer awareness music festival in the UK there. This was on hold for 2 years, but restaged in June 2022 at Taunton RFC. We work closely with the music department at Richard Huish College and this year working with art students at Taunton & Bridgwater College.