Our Cancer Our Way
Our Cancer Our Way is a project all about improving cancer services for children, teenagers and young adults (CTYA). Over the last year, we have gathered a lot of feedback from CTYA and their parents/carers about their experiences of cancer care. We asked them to tell us what was working well, what wasn’t going so well and what improvements they would make if they could. We received a lot of positive feedback and also heard about things that could be done differently to improve the experience of children and young people with cancer.
Younger children were invited to share drawings, pictures, a story or poem, a song or photos, or talk to us. Teenagers and young adults were invited to share blogs, artwork, poetry, video diaries, mind maps, songs, posters, photo diaries and stories, or to come an online focus group. Adults were invited to come to an online focus groups, had telephone interview or share their feedback via email.
We put the comments and suggestions into themes which were:
- Communication/Information
- Support
- Practical issues
The task now is to work out where to start with the improvements and so we’ve asked people to choose their top priorities from each theme for making improvements. The hospital teams are sending a survey out to all those affected which will help us see what matters most to people. Our plan is to work through all the feedback eventually, but we need a place to begin. Younger children are also being involved by being asked to put stickers onto worksheets which have been specially designed for this project so they can say what matters most to them.
Thank you to all of the people involved in the project so far – it has been true coproduction in action!
If you want to know more, please contact Sue.Bickler@helpandcare.org.uk or Louise.Hooker@nhs.net