We’re really looking forward to sharing our ambitious plans for Community Networks over the next five years with you.

We want to develop a strong, vibrant, diverse, and connected network of communities supporting people to live well with MS. We hope you can join one of our Zoom sessions to hear about how we’d like to achieve this, together.

Head of Community Networks, David Light, will be leading the session and will be giving an overview of our plans to create:

Our 2022 Annual Lecture will take place on Wednesday 8 June at 7.15pm at the Royal College of Physicians in London. It's a key feature of the Stop MS Appeal, giving donors and supporters the chance to hear about the latest in MS research from eminent scientists.

It’s a legal requirement for all charities to have consent to contact their supporters about their activities by email, and we invite supporters to renew this consent every three years.

Therefore, under e-privacy regulations, once a person’s opt-in to receive emails from us has expired, we have to remove their email data from our databases.

What will the process be?

In the next few weeks, we'll be getting in touch with our group members listed on the Portal to ask them for their consent to be contacted by email.

We’re delighted that more and more groups now feel able to resume the social gatherings which are such a lifeline to our service users. We know that a key element of these events can be offering refreshments to those who attend. But it’s important to clarify that group volunteers should not be preparing food.

This was our policy before any COVID-19 restrictions, and will remain so.

Every day, people fall prey to malicious emails and hacking scams. Data theft and online crime in the UK has increased by 47% since the beginning of the pandemic. Cyber-criminals are becoming more sophisticated and a password alone is no longer enough to keep information safe.

We therefore need to take action now to protect against personal information being stolen from our systems. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) adds a second layer of security to online accounts because it relies on two forms of authentication:

We all have a role to play to keep people in our MS community safe. Data protection is all about keeping personal data safe and so protecting the rights and privacy of individuals.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be launching a new GDPR – Keeping Data Safe online training (e-learning) for volunteers.

You’ll need to complete this if you’ve not done GDPR training in the last two years and you have access to personal data via MS Society systems in any way.

We know that every day, across the UK, our volunteers are doing all they can to improve the lives of those affected by MS. We simply couldn’t do what we do without you. So, we want to recognise the difference you make – and to show our appreciation in ways which make you feel valued and motivated.

We learnt from feedback that our current methods of recognition are failing to connect with some volunteers. The time was right to take a fresh look at how we acknowledge and highlight commitment, achievement and successes.

We want to ensure we’re keeping you better informed of changes to our printed resources so we now have a list of the latest versions on the Volunteer Website here. You can find this list in the Resource Library or by doing a quick search.

‘Information resources – latest versions’ is a simple list of the printed booklets available, and the dates of the latest versions.

Historically, most research into how genes influence the risk of MS has focussed on people of European ancestry. This has been tremendously successful. But we now know that MS affects people of all ancestral and ethnic backgrounds. It’s therefore essential that MS research reflects this diversity. What we learn from genetics today may shape the treatments and diagnostic tests of tomorrow, so our genetic understanding of MS needs to be representative of the whole population.