The service is designed for people who have lost someone who has died from an illness, it does not have to have been recent.

To sign up for this service, you will need:

• access to a landline or mobile phone and an email address
• to be able to hear and be understood over the phone
• to be able to commit to regular calls with your matched volunteer over the agreed period of time, during service opening hours.
• to be willing to agree to the below conditions and fill out our mutual agreement form.

Conditions

We ask that you do not:

• exchange personal details, including your telephone number and postal or email address
• visit your matched bereavement support volunteer
• contact your bereavement support volunteer through any method of communication other than the telephone calls arranged through our service. This includes social media.
• use inappropriate language or behaviour including discrimination and always be respectful.
• conduct calls under the influence of substances, such as alcohol and drugs.

If the above conditions are not met, your matched volunteer might decide to close the session early if they feel it is appropriate to do so.

The service is confidential, though there are some specific occasions where we may need to break that confidentiality (these are listed below).

We won’t share your data with anyone outside of Marie Curie and we won't use your information to send you any marketing information. The information, taken as part of your use of the service, is restricted to the Bereavement Service team.

We maintain a secure database which only our Bereavement Service staff can access. The database contains only the information needed for us to be able to deliver the service. We collect this personal information to be able to deliver the support, help us understand how effective our service is, who we're reaching, and how we can support more people.

Your call will be recorded to monitor the quality of our service and support the training of our volunteers. All service calls will be recorded as part of our safeguarding process, and to monitor the quality of our service and support the training of our volunteers. The call recordings will be stored in a secure database and will only be accessed by the Bereavement Service team. These recordings will be deleted after five years of your receiving our support.

We will only use your number and email address to contact you about the service and for your support sessions. We won't pass your number to anyone else unless confidentiality must be broken (in the exceptions to the policy stated below).

At the end of your support sessions, we will collect some demographic information from you. We collect your gender, age, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity and the first part of your postcode in order to help us understand who we're reaching and where. This information is not used for any other purpose.

We will ask you for feedback on our service to use for quality purposes and to help us demonstrate impact. The full recorded feedback will be deleted after 5 years, some comments and quotes may be retained for longer to use internally.
We'll only use your feedback for external communications with express consent.

How long we keep your information for

• If you decide you no longer want to receive the service before you start your support sessions, your information will be deleted immediately.
• The personal data you give us in order to access the service – name, number, email address – will be deleted after five years after you have received our service.

Who can access your information?

Only Bereavement Service staff at Marie Curie can access the information you give us. We won't share your information unless there is a reason to break confidentiality, as listed below.

Occasions where we would break confidentiality

There are times where we'll need to break this confidentiality agreement; the following are such occasions, though this is not an exhaustive list:

• Where information of terrorism, money laundering or a bomb threat is disclosed to us
• If we receive a court order or in order to comply with our legal obligations to share information
• If we become aware, hear about or suspect that abuse/harm may have taken place or may occur in relation to any adult or child
• In the event that our staff or service is abused
• If we believe someone is taking steps to end their life.
• If appropriate, we will inform you that we're going to do this.

For further information about how we use your personal information, please see our Privacy Policy.