Introduction
Last week we were honoured to attend the East of England Macmillan Professionals Conference and contribute to a panel discussion exploring how community projects such as our Macmillan Community Voices project can generate meaningful insight and translate this into real-world action to better support people affected by cancer. Alongside us on the panel were Angharad Binder, Programme Officer for the Farming Community Network and Caitlin Evans, Rural Health and Wellbeing Manager for Cambridgeshire ACRE.
Insight into Different Challenges
The panel discussion provided an interesting insight into the challenges different communities face when affected by cancer. The Farming Community Network highlighted the assumptions that are often made that farmers are wealthy and live a wonderfully privileged life, and that there is a real lack of understanding around the challenges farmers face and the realities of the workload and isolation. Cambridgeshire ACRE highlighted the barriers faced by rural communities such as transport poverty and digital exclusion. While our Macmillan Community Voices project pointed out structural inequalities including language access, culturally appropriate care. However, there were also a lot of similarities between our projects, not least the importance of building trust.
Overall the whole event was very informative with a number of other presentations throughout the day. Macmillan’s Chief Nursing Officer, Claire Taylor in their keynote speech highlighted the challenges that Macmillan Professionals face today, while celebrating the positive impact they have on people’s lives and highlighting how Macmillan are supporting the NHS Cancer Plan to improve outcomes for patients.
“What if you couldn’t hear your own diagnosis?…”
Closing the conference, there was a powerful keynote presentation from the Deaf Cancer Support project, which is delivered by Self Help UK and supported by Macmillan Cancer Support. Titled, “What if you couldn’t hear your own diagnosis?…”, the presentation vividly illustrated the significant physical, emotional and practical impact that communication barriers can have on D/deaf people throughout the cancer-care pathway when accessible communication is not provided.
>For more information about Community360 Macmillan Community Voices Project contact voices@community360.org.uk
>To find out more about support available from Macmillan Cancer Support click here
