Maggie’s Online Centre is an online community designed to provide psychological and emotional support for anyone affected by cancer. It mirrors the services provided by the physical Maggie’s centres, with the added benefit of being accessible anywhere and anytime. The online community has grown in less than a year into a healthy community and as one member put it, “it taught me I wasn’t alone”.

Maggie’s Centres provides an evidence-based programme of psycho-social support to people affected by cancer.  Its centres are located next to NHS Cancer Centres, to ensure accessibility and ease of use. The work of the centres offline provide a valuable service to vulnerable people, but Maggie’s recognised that there are times (and places) when its ten centres couldn’t be there for those in need. Maggie’s online vision was to mirror the services and support mechanisms available in its ‘bricks and mortar’.

In order to benefit a wider group, we developed an online centre which would mirror the services of their physical centres which can be accessed anytime and anywhere. Vexed has a bespoke community platform which was adapted to serve Maggie’s needs.

The site supports all the normal features of a forum – groups, private messaging and discussion boards.  The most important feature is the ability to join the online centre group counselling sessions moderated by one of Maggie’s psychologists. The features and functions were defined through a pilot, followed by further round of tweaking to optimise the experience for the community members.

With more than ten thousand unique visitors a month, the site has become a well-established online centre – and over 500 members drop in now every day. Together Vexed and Maggie’s have created a lively, sympathetic online centre for people at a trying time in their lives.