THE PROFESSIONALS

FROM the moment a person is told they have cancer, their diagnosis can begin to affect every part of their daily lives.

It can have a huge impact on the person and their family, their finances, their long-term physical and emotional health, as well as their ability to do what is important to them.

Nowhere is this felt more strongly than for people nearing the end of life.

Only recently we reported that across our welfare benefits services in Wales there has been a 20% increase in applications to fast-track welfare benefits for people who are terminally ill.

This is a significant increase in applications for a DS1500 form, which is aimed at people with less than six months to live, fast-tracks their access to benefits they are entitled to and helps ease their financial worries.

Macmillan believes the rise points to an emerging “side-effect” of the cancer backlog caused by the pandemic – people being diagnosed later with harder-to-treat cancers as a result.

It also crystallises the vital importance of being able to care for the whole person, and to recognise that wider “everyday” concerns and worries still exist for people at every stage of their care.

Significant gaps existed in the provision of personalised care well before this pandemic began, gaps we fear will continue to widen as the crisis progresses.

Only recently we warned that an increasing number of cancer patients are facing anxious delays as demand for cancer treatment grows in Wales.

Well over a third of cancer patients – more than 600 people during July of this year alone – did not receive their cancer treatments on time according to the latest Welsh Government data.

Achieving the best outcomes for people with cancer rests on the basic tenets of early diagnosis and timely treatment, and both are being sorely tested during this crisis.

But reversing this trend must not just stop at getting people back into the system and treating them on time alone; we also need to focus on the individual needs of people and their longer-term care as well.

That is why later this year, people treated for cancer during the pandemic year of 2020 will be asked to share their experiences and help shape cancer care in Wales. Around 11,000 people will be asked to share their views in the latest Wales Cancer Patient Experience Survey to help identify what is working well and where improvements can be made.

The last time such a survey was completed was back in 2016.

At the time there was much to be celebrated. But there were also significant areas of concern.

More than half (52%) of cancer patients surveyed did not receive the financial information they needed and only 18% were offered a written care plan to help manage their wider financial, emotional or information needs.

The importance of such wider care must not be underestimated.

On the point of financial advice alone – people should not have to manage the huge emotional and physical strain of cancer while worrying about how to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head at the same time.

That is why Macmillan helped people with cancer in Wales to access more than £19m of financial support to cover the cost of essentials during June 2020 to June of this year alone.

This personalised approach is the foundation stone upon which the recovery of Wales’ cancer care services must be built – an understanding of the “everyday” pressures that come with learning to “live with cancer” and how “good” cancer care will always extend well beyond what happens in hospital.

That is why Macmillan Cancer Support continues to call on the Welsh Government for a detailed plan of action.

We need a plan that will guide our cancer care services to recovery, a recovery that puts the basic tenets of early diagnosis and timely treatment firmly back in place.

We need a plan that will steer cancer care through the many impacts of this pandemic, ones that will be felt for many years to come.

We need a plan for how Wales will recruit, train and achieve the 80% increase in specialist cancer nurses that, according to our latest research, Wales will need to see by the end of this decade alone.

And we need a plan that deals not just in waiting lists and data, but the people behind them. A plan that delivers a cancer care system that puts people at the heart of everything it does.

Only then will Wales achieve the full cancer care recovery we all hope and wish to see.