We help people living with illnesses to support each other through 1-1 conversations.
Whether you're a new patient with a lot of questions or a veteran with a story to share, we can connect you with someone to chat with you about their experience, and listen to you about yours.
Sign up today to join our community and to be invited to our matching rounds.
We developed Someone Who Knows for those moments when you just want to talk to someone who gets it and who cares in the way that only someone with lived experience can.
This is a form of peer support, and our approach to it is a little different from other online communities. We believe that two people talking in a safe and private space can lead to deeper understanding and more time to explore the questions you have.
You can use peer support to:
You can speak to someone at any point in your health journey when you want a bit more knowledge or understanding. We often find that people benefit from peer support when they are newly diagnosed or when a treatment milestone is coming up, like an operation or new type of treatment.
You can sign up with just your name and email address. You don't need to tell us anything else about you or your health until you want to start meeting people. We'll then invite you to our matching rounds, which happen about once a month.
Everyone is invited to each matching round. If you feel ready to take part, let us know by replying to the email. If not, no problem! We'll email you again next month. If you do, you tell us a bit about what you'd like to talk about. We'll use that information to find you a match.
You choose what times you're available to meet, and then we'll schedule the session with your match. You'll meet them over video the first time, and if you want to meet with them again afterwards, that's up to you.
From talking to a lot of different people with various conditions, we've found that support from others is most valuable when the illness is long term, and when it demands a large amount of self-management.
Among our community are people with Diabetes, Ulcerative Colitis, Crohn's disease, Asthma, Psoriasis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Occupational Burnout and more.
Whatever your condition, we would love to welcome you to our community and find you someone to talk to. The more people who join us, the more connections we can make.
People taking care of someone with an illness also need support. You can use Someone Who Knows to find a person who understands what it's like for you, or to speak to a patient who can tell you what its like for the person you're caring for.
Perhaps you're further along in your journey and you've found answers to a lot of the questions you've had. You could be a great mentor for someone else!
We'd love for you to join our community and take part in matching rounds. A lot of people newer to the experience of being a patient or a carer could benefit greatly from what you've got to share.
We're creating this service to help as many people living with illness as possible to find support from someone who understands their struggle and can help them through their own journey.
We don't want cost to be a barrier to accessing support, so there will always be a free way to find a match and talk to another person.
In future you'll also be able to find professional counsellors through Someone Who Knows, and there will be a fee to use this. We'll share more details about this and the other ways in which we fund our service soon.
Someone Who Knows is run by people who know how it is to take a journey as a patient alone, and we want to make sure that others don't have to.
Our founder, Alex, was diagnosed with Inflammatory Bowel Disease more than 20 years ago. He says about finding peer support:
"I didn't meet anybody else with my condition until several years after my diagnosis. But when I did, it was transformative! My doctors and nurses were amazing, but they couldn't bring the perspective and understanding of what it's actually like to live with this condition."
We believe in the power of patients to support each other. We want to help as many patients as possible to find others they can share with and learn from.
