Terms and conditions

1. Who we are

Muscular Dystrophy Community ("MDC", "we", "us") is an independent peer-support site for people living with muscular dystrophy, their families, carers, and the professionals who support them. We're not part of, run by, or officially connected to Muscular Dystrophy UK or any other charity, NHS body, or company — see About for more on how and why this site is built the way it is. By creating an account or using this site, you're agreeing to these terms.

This site is operated by MD Community CIC, a Community Interest Company registered in England and Wales, company number 17455721.

2. Who can use this site

Most content — Support, News, Information, Stories and Resources — is readable by anyone, no account needed. Posting, replying, messaging and the personal tools require an account.

• Adults (18+) can create their own account directly.
• Under-18s don't self-register — a parent or carer creates the account for them from their own account settings. Messaging between an adult and an under-18 account isn't possible in either direction, no exceptions. When someone turns 18, the account can be converted to a full adult account — by the account holder themselves, or by a moderator.
• One account per person. Don't create an account to impersonate someone else, or to get around a suspension.

3. Your account

You're responsible for keeping your password secure and for anything posted from your account. Give us accurate information when you sign up. You can delete your account yourself, at any time, from your account settings — this genuinely deletes your personal data, it's not a hidden flag (see About for exactly what that does and doesn't remove).

4. What you can't do here

This is a peer-support community, not a marketplace or a general-purpose forum. You agree not to:

• Advertise or promote unregulated "treatments", miracle cures, supplements, or any other product or service — whether or not you're selling it yourself. Content like this gets removed the same day it's reported, and the account responsible can be suspended.
• Give medical advice as though it were fact. Share your own experience freely — that's what this site is for — but guides, stories and discussions here are general information and lived experience, not a substitute for your own care team. Guides say this explicitly for the same reason.
• Harass, threaten, or deliberately upset another member, impersonate someone else, or post anything illegal, defamatory, or knowingly false.
• Message someone who hasn't agreed to hear from you. Messaging here is consent-first by design — requests, not cold messages — and going around that (e.g. repeatedly re-requesting after a decline) isn't acceptable.
• Scrape, bulk-download, or use automated tools against the site, or try to access another member's account or data you're not meant to see.

5. Your content

You own what you post — threads, replies, stories, guides, small wins, voice recordings, anything else. By posting it, you give us permission to store it and show it to the people it's meant for (which might be the whole internet, just members, or just moderators, depending on the visibility you choose). You're responsible for what you post, and for having the right to post it. Report anything that shouldn't be here using the report link wherever you see one — staff review every report on threads, replies, stories, guides, and message requests.

6. Suspension and removal

If you break these terms, staff can remove the specific content involved, or suspend your account — a reversible freeze: you keep your data, but can't sign in or post until it's lifted. We don't delete accounts as a moderation action; account deletion is something only you can do, to your own account, since suspension already covers what a punitive removal needs to do without touching your data. We'll always tell you why if you ask — see the About page for how to reach a moderator.

7. Health information and the tools here

Guides, PIP tools, and anything else here that touches health, benefits, or equipment is general information to help you navigate the system and have better conversations with the people who actually assess or treat you — not a medical, legal, or financial opinion about your specific situation. The PIP points estimator gives a likely outcome band based on how you answer, not a guarantee of what a real assessment will find. Always check anything that matters against your own care team, adviser, or the official source it points to.

8. Video calls and third-party links

Weekly fixture video calls run on our own self-hosted infrastructure, not a third party. Some pages link out to external organisations (NHS, GOV.UK, Muscular Dystrophy UK, and others) for support or information — we don't control those sites and aren't responsible for their content, and linking to them isn't an endorsement either way. Staff-assigned affiliation badges on member profiles (e.g. "NHS Physiotherapist") note a claimed connection to that organisation — they don't mean the organisation itself has any connection to this site.

9. No guarantees

This site is provided as it is. We don't guarantee it'll always be available, error-free, or exactly the same tomorrow as it is today — it's actively built and changed, sometimes at members' request. To the extent the law allows, we're not liable for loss arising from your use of the site, decisions made based on content posted by other members, or reliance on the tools here in place of professional advice.

10. Changes to these terms

We might update these terms as the site changes. The date at the top of this page always reflects the latest version. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the update.

11. Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales.