For too long, cancer care has been neglected – now is the time to fix it
4 min read
When someone receives a cancer diagnosis, it turns their whole life upside down.
It’s not just the daunting and demanding treatment schedule, people worry about finances, relationships and their job. The entire landscape of your life shifts almost entirely.
With over 300,000 visits a year to our 27 Maggie’s centres across the UK, we see this everyday. The public understand it too – our new polling shows that more than four in five (81 per cent) people believe the emotional impact of cancer is as significant or more significant than the physical side effects.
However, it can often be neglected in NHS cancer care and the government’s upcoming cancer plan is a good opportunity to put that right.
While timely treatment and early diagnosis are obviously crucial parts of world class cancer care, emotional and practical support must be available and easy to access for patients before, during and after cancer.
Thanks to advances in treatment, people are now living longer with cancer and while this is good and welcome news, it means the number of people living with the mental and physical impact of cancer is growing too. If we don’t get rehabilitation right, then we are not helping people to recover properly and return to productive lives.
Many people who we support want to get back to work and they want to contribute and not depend on the state or their families. But without the right practical and emotional support, often people become stuck.
Modelling from the York Health Economics Consortium, shows our post treatment support drives productivity and offers a societal benefit of £1.2 million to the UK economy through a reduction in sickness benefits and through taxable income of those back in work.
So, prioritising this support in the cancer plan is not only good for patients, it is a smart investment for the NHS and the economy too.
Maggie’s centres welcome hundreds of thousands of people with cancer as well as their family and friends each year – our centres are seen as a safe space, thoughtfully designed on the grounds of NHS hospitals, that does not feel or look clinical.
Staffed by cancer support specialists, benefits advisors, volunteers and psychologists, we help people to navigate the challenges of cancer – from side effects to mental health care, exercise classes and help with finances.
We believe our model of support should be embedded in NHS care so that no one faces cancer alone.
Our model includes support at the start of treatment with our ‘Getting Started’ sessions, which help people understand how treatment works, the side effects to expect, and how nutrition and gentle exercise can help. People leave feeling more informed, prepared and in control.
Support is just as vital when treatment ends with many people describe feeling abandoned when months of regular appointments suddenly stop. Our six-week 'Where Now?' programme helps people adjust to life after cancer and it helps address long term side effects, relationships, physical activity and returning to work.
The transformation of cancer care in Denmark is often held up as model for the UK and it was actually directly influenced by the approach we adopt at Maggie’s. Healthcare leaders from Denmark visited us years ago and as a result, their healthcare system now works with the Danish cancer care charity to provide integrated support across the country.
This is the approach the NHS should take in England. The government and the NHS needn’t look that far – Maggie’s is already on the doorsteps of NHS hospitals across the country with ambitious plans to be at even more major cancer centres.
The expertise, evidence and infrastructure already exist and so the government should make the most of it in the cancer plan and encourage NHS partnerships with third sector organisations like ours.
Laura Lee is chief executive of Maggie's
