Roberta's story
Roberta Lovick, one of the carers who shared her experience to develop a Macmillan handbook for carers, talks about how she got involved:
"To be able to take part in writing Hello, and how are you? was a brilliant opportunity to hopefully help others in a similar predicament. My hope is that in the future carers can be seen as individuals with their own needs".
The Bridges project story
"The Bridges is a social care project just outside Birmingham that is shaped directly by the experience of patients and their carers living with cancer. The project adopts a client-focused model and it is only by listening to the needs of patients and their carers that we can be effective in supporting them. Presently, we have two service users members on the Bridges Steering Group and they also are members of the Pan Birmingham Cancer Network User Group." Manjula Patel, Macmillan Project Manager.
Other successes include:
-
Crossroads in Macclesfield set up a proactive complaints and comments system and carers are active members on the trust board.
-
Citizens Advice nationally has established systems for developing client and community profiles and undertaking client satisfaction surveys
-
Hillingdon CAB did a survey of people who did not use their service to find out why and identify ways of making the service more user friendly
See how you can help such organisations by visiting our Cancer Voices Network. You may be asked to get involved in research or contribute ideas to new policy for carers. Whatever opportunity you decide to make the most of, it will help towards improving cancer services.
It’s that easy. It’s that effective.