Our Campaigns and Projects

05 July, 2019

Colostomy UK support and empower people with stomas.

We want hidden conditions to be understood and accepted by all. Our vision is of a world where everyone is empowered to reach their full potential. At the moment, this isn’t the case. There is a general lack of awareness about stomas and the needs of people (ostomates) with them. We seek to address this through our campaigns and advocacy work. Here is an overview of our current campaigns and projects.

Stoma Friendly Society

As well as raising public awareness about stomas, this campaign is also about ensuring that the everyday needs of ostomates are catered for. This means encouraging businesses and organisations to make practical changes to the everything from the signs they use to the facilities they offer. Our successes so far include:

Accessible Toilets

You can find ‘stoma friendly’ toilets and/or improved signage in the following locations: Salisbury City, Côte Brasserie, INTU shopping centres, Sainsburys, Waitrose, Lord’s Cricket Club, Great Dawley Town Council, Tesco, Asda, Medway Park, Morrisons, & many more.

Air Travel

Ostomates get anxious going through airport security. In order to make air travel accessible to all, we are working with: The Civil Aviation Authority and lots of UK Airports and their staff, including Heathrow, Gatwick, Stanstead, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff and Bournemouth.

Fighting The Poo Taboo

We don’t just want to raise awareness about stomas, we also want to make it okay to talk about life with a stoma. To do this, people need to be comfortable talking about poo.

We believe that if we can break the taboo then ostomates will be empowered to lead fuller lives and public understanding of their needs will grow too.

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Our Projects

Active Ostomates

Our projects help ostomates get their lives back on track and give them the confidence to take on new challenges. There is overwhelming evidence that being active is good for your physical and mental wellbeing. ‘Active Ostomates’ is a great example of one of our current projects. It helps ostomates try all sorts of activities including chair yoga, swimming and archery. We have so far delivered over 150 activity sessions to around 2,500 ostomates.

Caring for a person with a stoma

Many carers may have never had to care for a person with a stoma before so it is useful to know how having one can not only affect someone physically but emotionally as well. Our workshops are for profesional carers, family members and re-ablement teams and run by Stoma Care nurses.

This gives you a broad overview of our current projects and campaigns, if you’d like to find out more why not get in touch with us on: info@colostomyuk.org or 0118 939 1537