Memorandum by Macmillan Cancer Relief
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HEALTH & SOCIAL
SERVICES (HSS 68)
2. MACMILLAN
CANCER RELIEF
Macmillan works with the NHS and others to provide
people who have cancer, and their families, with expert nursing
and medical care, and with emotional and practical support from
the point of diagnosis onwards.
Each year in the UK more than 300,000 people
develop cancer, and statistically one in three individuals will
contract cancer at some time in their life. Epidemiological and
demographic factors indicate, however, that by 2018 those odds
will have shortened to one in two, and the one million people
currently living with cancer will have doubled.
Macmillan has developed a unique partnership
with the NHS in the field of cancer care. The charity currently
uses a considerable proportion of its budgeted £50 million
annual income to promote the development of cancer services within
the NHS by pump priming or grant aiding the introduction of supportive
and innovative forms of care and other facilities, as well as
clinical, educational, academic and research-based activities
designed to achieve advances and improvements in the range, level
and standards of care available to patients. The charity also
works with other organisations to provide people who have cancer,
and their families, with specialist nursing and medical care and
with emotional and practical support, from the point of diagnosis
onwards, in order that they may carry on living their lives despite
cancer.
Macmillan has been at the forefront of innovation
in cancer care. At the heart of Macmillan's pump priming work
are more than 1,600 Macmillan nurses—employed by the NHS
as specialists in cancer care, offering expert information and
advice on treatment, skills in pain and symptom control and emotional
support to people living with cancer. Working in hospitals and
in the community, they have an important role to play in ensuring
that each patient receives the best possible care and achieves
the highest quality of life from the time they are diagnosed,
whatever the outcome.
The charity also pump primes Macmillan doctors
and funds, designs and builds projects like day care centres,
run by the NHS, which help to improve the environment in which
people receive treatment and care. In addition, the charity makes
cash grants to patients with cancer who are in financial need,
to supplement the welfare benefits to which they may be entitled.
The annual budget for this service is currently
running at about £5 million. Practical problems can often,
from the patient's perspective, be worse than the cancer.
The above has sought to demonstrate how the
charity's work in response to cancer patients' needs spans both
health care and social services provision.
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