Welcome to the Bury Cancer Support Centre website.
Here at the Centre we offer all kinds of essential support for cancer patients, their immediate families, and their carers. This support includes complementary therapies, counselling, an information centre, and workshops on topical subjects for patients which give help and advice with aspects of coping with cancer and general well-being.
This website is an extension to the support we offer. The links on the left and within the pages will direct you to other parts of the site, but the links on the Links page will take you to other websites that hold the information you are seeking. We will only link to reputable sites to ensure that only accurate, up-to-date, and safe information will be found.
All treatments and workshops are free but as the Centre is run on donations these are appreciated.
The Centre is situated at ...
St. James Centre
St James Avenue (off Walshaw Road)
Bury, Lancashire
BL8 1TD
(near the Bolholt Country House Hotel)
The Centre is open Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays 10.30am to 4.00pm with last treatments being at 3.30pm. We operate as a drop-in centre so no appointments are necessary. Patients are seen in order of arrival although if several people want the same therapy they may need to wait a while. However, clinical need always takes precedence, which is why we have a triage in reception.
The Centre is working hard to be able to reach our ambition of being open (or operating) for five days a week in our own premises.
A brief history of the Centre. - Written by one of our co-founders.
Working at Bury Hospice and throughout the community made me, Edwina, realise that there were obvious gaps in support for cancer patients in the Bury area. But almost as bad was the lack of support for the immediate families and carers of cancer patients!
It was while working at Bury Hospice that I met Lynne, a hard working nurse who shared my vision of opening a local cancer support centre. As Lynne and I were very like minded we soon became friends.
It was on a cold January evening that Lynne, myself and Daphne who is a friend of mine, were sitting on the floor of the living room in Lynne's flat that the dream of the Bury Cancer Support Centre was hatched. Our joint experiences of the Bristol Cancer Support Centre (now Penny Brohn Cancer Care), the Haven Trust (now The Breast Cancer Haven) and the Preston based Gentle Approaches to Cancer (which was based on the Bristol Centre), gave us a good grounding in what was possible, and badly needed.
As word got around others came to join our small but dedicated band of pilgrims. Then, after fifteen hectic months of planning, lots of hard work and the help of a small Lottery Grant, the Centre became a reality and first opened its doors on 1st April 2003.
It was a dream come true for all of us. More therapists were recruited to increase the variety, quality and quantity of treatments that we offered.
In order that the original ideals of the Centre were etched in everyone's mind, we drew up a statement of aims, which is reproduced here.
