June 10 Macmillan Cancer Voices Regional Development Day at the Lyngford House Conference Centre, Taunton.
Stan, Debra and Rowland attended and heard presentations by various Macmillan staff involved with development of services and their future plans. Some key points were: -
Macmillan was not involved with children’s services as they were provided for by other organisations.
Macmillan was not involved with non-cancer services.
Macmillan care at home was not provided in Somerset as it was undertaken by St Margaret’s Hospice and Somerset Cancer Care (now part of the St Margaret’s group).
User involvement – opportunities exchange.
Macmillan Solutions – get people with cancer to say what they need, what would make a difference.
Review incidence and prevalence of types of cancer to look for “hot spots”. In the south west it is skin cancer.
Investment in social care - there had been a large input by Macmillan but this has now changed to work with CAB and DWP who will continue funding when the Macmillan input stops.
Pick up funding is now required before Macmillan will commit funding to new services or posts, so those creating the new service or post will require up front funds. Previously Macmillan provided 100% funding for up to three years provided the organisation committed itself to continuing the service when the Macmillan funding ended. It was a requirement, for example, that when a Macmillan Nurse post was created that post had to be maintained when the Macmillan funding ceased. If that nurse left then a replacement nurse had to be put in place and that nurse’s post would be as a Macmillan Nurse.
Macmillan Information Centres – they were now looking at smaller centres with spokes. Their large mobile centre “PODS” had proved difficult to locate at town and hospital sites because of its size. A towed Caravan centre was coming into use to enable a wider range of locations to be used.
Macmillan and Cancer Backup have merged and there will be free provision of fact sheets and information booklets.
Macmillan was involved in the new government initiative “Survivorship” that follows on from the earlier “Cancer Plan”.
Following the presentations participants were divided into three groups to discuss and respond on a series of topics arising from the presentations with a view to identifying strengths or gaps in Macmillan services. The final session of the afternoon involved the groups establishing an order of priority for services identified as being important in the earlier sessions. These were:- psychological and emotional support, access to financial benefits, out of hours service, GP awareness, access to clinical nurse, access to social workers, support and recognition of carers, information, support for children, post treatment programmes and raising profile of support groups. It was interesting that the priorities set by the three groups were broadly similar. A review of the individual responses revealed a completely different result with two of the topics considered to be important receiving no support at all. It was disappointing that the raising profile of support groups was near the bottom of the list. Probably not surprising as the participants included a large number of healthcare professionals, and some patients, carers and members of support groups.
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