WEBVTT
1
00:00:03.540 –> 00:00:07.340
The Cornwall Cancer Cafe podcast with Matthew Clarke.
2
00:00:07.620 –> 00:00:12.000
And a big virtual hug to you to start off episode two.
3
00:00:12.140 –> 00:00:16.180
Thanks to the National Lottery Community Fund for supporting this podcast.
4
00:00:16.360 –> 00:00:22.240
This week we are speaking to Mark Gaimer from Cancer Support UK.
5
00:00:22.340 –> 00:00:28.760
He’s the chief executive and we will be having him on lots of other podcasts looking
6
00:00:28.760 –> 00:00:33.840
back and giving his retrospective thoughts on what’s been said.
7
00:00:33.880 –> 00:00:40.420
But I thought this week we would talk to him about Cancer Support UK itself.
8
00:00:41.500 –> 00:00:43.660
So, Mark, welcome to the podcast.
9
00:00:44.000 –> 00:00:45.780
Thank you, Matthew, and pleasure to be here.
10
00:00:46.040 –> 00:00:53.860
So just tell me a little bit about what Cancer Support UK is and what its aims and objectives are.
11
00:00:53.860 –> 00:01:04.540
Cancer Support UK is a national charity and we have an aim to create a kinder world for people impacted by cancer.
12
00:01:05.200 –> 00:01:08.980
And we do this by delivering three core services.
13
00:01:09.060 –> 00:01:13.360
So we talk about providing practical and emotional support.
14
00:01:14.000 –> 00:01:19.960
The practical support is delivered by offering a range of free cancer kits.
15
00:01:20.440 –> 00:01:25.340
So we have four different types of kits depending on people’s needs.
16
00:01:25.800 –> 00:01:33.740
And these are special packages of items that have been put together by people that have lived experience.
17
00:01:34.340 –> 00:01:43.780
So it sometimes is the simplest item such as a lip balm that somebody who hasn’t experienced cancer wouldn’t
18
00:01:43.780 –> 00:01:53.740
realise that through treatment, their lips may get drier and a lip balm can actually be a great sense of relief at a moment when you when you need it.
19
00:01:54.520 –> 00:02:01.980
So there’s a whole range of items that have been put together and we send those out to people who have had a cancer diagnosis.
20
00:02:03.480 –> 00:02:11.740
Although it’s about the practical support, the feedback that we get from people is the emotional lift that they get when they receive a package
21
00:02:11.740 –> 00:02:17.880
that firstly has been delivered because of the donations of individuals.
22
00:02:17.880 –> 00:02:21.160
So as a charity, we don’t get any government funding.
23
00:02:21.420 –> 00:02:27.380
It’s all delivered through individuals and trust donations.
24
00:02:27.880 –> 00:02:31.480
And that really has a positive impact on people.
25
00:02:31.580 –> 00:02:36.640
But there are people out there that care or thinking about them is really important.
26
00:02:36.640 –> 00:02:42.880
So although we talk about it as practical support, it also provides an important emotional lift.
27
00:02:43.040 –> 00:02:45.420
And you have cancer coaches as well, don’t you?
28
00:02:45.740 –> 00:02:55.620
Yeah, and cancer coaches, the cancer coach service is about providing emotional support for people who have finished their physical treatment.
29
00:02:56.460 –> 00:03:06.980
Again, through people with lived experience, we identified a need for a service to help people once they had finished their cancer treatment.
30
00:03:08.460 –> 00:03:20.920
And Macmillan did a massive survey a long time ago, which reported that about 78 percent of all people who had had cancer treatment had unmet emotional needs.
31
00:03:20.920 –> 00:03:35.740
And our own data through our Cancer Compass search tool allows us to see that around about 85 percent of people who have finished their cancer treatment have anxiety, increased anxiety.
32
00:03:36.160 –> 00:03:50.860
So we developed this emotional support service, again, working with people with lived experience, but also working with Mental Health England to make sure that we developed a service that could provide some emotional support.
33
00:03:50.860 –> 00:03:53.400
And we’ll talk a little bit more about that in a moment.
34
00:03:53.540 –> 00:04:06.940
But now I’d just like to talk a bit about you and your journey and why you joined Cancer Support UK and what you bring to this amazing charity.
35
00:04:07.060 –> 00:04:18.620
Yeah, I guess my career prior to joining Cancer Support UK was in the commercial sector, working in new businesses, technology businesses,
36
00:04:18.620 –> 00:04:26.340
growing them often from the beginning or from a very early stage in scaling those businesses up.
37
00:04:26.800 –> 00:04:34.760
But during that that time, I was always keen to support the not for profit sector.
38
00:04:34.800 –> 00:04:41.680
So I was doing trustee roles, initially focused around supporting people with financial hardship.
39
00:04:42.370 –> 00:04:54.220
And more recently, and I’m still a trustee today for a charity that supports families where they’ve been impacted by someone’s addiction to drugs, alcohol or gambling.
40
00:04:54.760 –> 00:04:57.300
So I’d always had an interest in this sector.
41
00:04:58.680 –> 00:05:06.160
I always knew that I would at some point, if the right opportunity came along, look to get more involved in the sector.
42
00:05:06.160 –> 00:05:15.960
And I also have my own personal experience around cancer through family and through friends.
43
00:05:17.020 –> 00:05:29.660
So when the opportunity came to join an organization like Cancer Support UK, that was very much something that through my experiences and my my career was very interesting.
44
00:05:29.660 –> 00:05:42.620
Well, in terms of this particular opportunity and what my experience could bring, I think increasingly in the current environment, which we all know is financially getting tougher and tougher.
45
00:05:43.680 –> 00:05:47.360
I think charities are having to become a lot more innovative.
46
00:05:48.580 –> 00:05:53.940
Most charities will tell you that financially it is getting more and more difficult.
47
00:05:53.940 –> 00:06:08.560
And therefore it needs innovative and a more commercial outlook in terms of how these organizations are run, but still with a focus on delivering impact for people.
48
00:06:08.960 –> 00:06:23.760
So it’s really important that I think charities identify where they can add value, how they can partner with people and how they deliver real value for every pound that they’re able to spend.
49
00:06:23.760 –> 00:06:31.180
So that sort of I felt with my experience of building businesses in the commercial sector were very transferable skills.
50
00:06:31.500 –> 00:06:41.960
And I was reading that one of the first things that you did when you came into the role was that you actually did the Cancer Coach course yourself.
51
00:06:42.540 –> 00:06:50.180
Yeah, I think it’s really important that you sort of really understand the services that you’re delivering.
52
00:06:50.180 –> 00:07:06.940
And I have to say, you know, going on that course was the best induction that I could have had to the organization because you’re seeing firsthand the service users and their experiences, which is so, so important.
53
00:07:07.020 –> 00:07:15.960
And we work so hard to constantly listen to people using our services and constantly feed that back into what we’re doing.
54
00:07:16.060 –> 00:07:19.900
So we try to never stand still from that that respect.
55
00:07:19.900 –> 00:07:33.480
So for me to go on that course, hear people’s stories was a way for me to really connect with the cause and to really understand the challenge and the problem that we were trying to solve firsthand.
56
00:07:33.660 –> 00:07:36.560
So it was a really useful induction for me.
57
00:07:36.740 –> 00:07:46.500
Now, earlier on, you were talking about post treatment anxiety, one of the things which is very frequent.
58
00:07:46.500 –> 00:07:59.300
In fact, I can vouch for that as I’m in remission from my third line of treatment of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and do suffer a loss of anxiety.
59
00:07:59.880 –> 00:08:10.040
Yeah, this, as you can imagine, and you know firsthand, Matthew, you know, this is a very, in some ways, complicated and vast area.
60
00:08:10.200 –> 00:08:15.000
You know, we could spend many hours discussing this and the nuances within it.
61
00:08:15.000 –> 00:08:26.060
I think the key takeaways that I would impart to people is that if you think about somebody who has had a cancer diagnosis, the way that it typically works,
62
00:08:26.060 –> 00:08:34.299
we hope it works in the health system, is that you are as quickly as possible moved into the treatment cycle.
63
00:08:35.299 –> 00:08:41.400
And the NHS is very good at that point because it’s they tell you exactly where you need to be, what you need to do.
64
00:08:41.400 –> 00:08:46.760
And I think as humans, we go into survival mode, you know, we do what we’re told.
65
00:08:47.020 –> 00:08:55.180
And there’s that sort of situation where you’re like, right, you know, I just need to do the things I’m being told for the best possible outcome.
66
00:08:55.840 –> 00:09:03.540
Once you finish treatment, you’re kind of in some cases, people talk about ringing the bell in the hospital, you know,
67
00:09:03.540 –> 00:09:13.100
And there is that immediate sense of relief. And for people around you, almost a sense of joy, you know, yes, Matthew’s done it.
68
00:09:13.140 –> 00:09:17.320
Well done, Matthew, you’ve been successful and you can now get on with your life.
69
00:09:17.440 –> 00:09:21.440
And that’s in part because they want you to feel like that.
70
00:09:21.800 –> 00:09:24.620
You know, they’re not being cruel, they’re not being dismissive.
71
00:09:25.000 –> 00:09:30.000
But this has also been a challenge for people around you in different ways.
72
00:09:30.000 –> 00:09:37.440
So there’s this natural situation now where after a little while you start to process what you’ve been through,
73
00:09:37.480 –> 00:09:40.020
you’ve got more time to think about it.
74
00:09:40.340 –> 00:09:48.060
And for many people, it can be quite traumatic, but you’re processing that and trying to work out now how you move forwards.
75
00:09:48.720 –> 00:09:52.520
Everyone around you is saying, well, lucky Matthew, well done you.
76
00:09:53.040 –> 00:09:59.060
And you start to feel quite guilty about that because you’re like, I can’t say to people, actually, I don’t feel great.
77
00:09:59.060 –> 00:10:00.600
I don’t feel brilliant.
78
00:10:01.280 –> 00:10:09.240
And I’m struggling a little bit here to work out what is Matthew now and how I’m going to go forwards with this after that experience.
79
00:10:09.520 –> 00:10:22.480
I was reading through your profile and a lot of the points you’re talking about to really resonate with me right now as I’m at this stage.
80
00:10:22.480 –> 00:10:27.380
And I don’t want to make this a personal counselling session.
81
00:10:27.400 –> 00:10:29.240
I’ve had enough of those recently.
82
00:10:29.760 –> 00:10:37.540
But one of the things that I’m challenged with is finding my route forward.
83
00:10:38.180 –> 00:10:40.620
I’m not so retirement age yet.
84
00:10:40.680 –> 00:10:45.700
So it’s about rebooting career, rebooting life, all those sorts of things.
85
00:10:46.220 –> 00:10:51.660
Yeah. And it’s really interesting that you talk about the work aspect, because, again,
86
00:10:51.660 –> 00:10:55.760
it’s one of the areas that we’re seeing increasingly.
87
00:10:56.140 –> 00:11:05.260
There is a recognition that more needs to be done in relation to supporting people and their need and desire to work.
88
00:11:05.300 –> 00:11:13.120
So we are close now to about a million people in the UK who are of working age that have had a cancer diagnosis.
89
00:11:13.120 –> 00:11:15.740
We’re not talking about a few people.
90
00:11:15.740 –> 00:11:24.080
People, again, often make assumptions that we’re only talking about older people or people not working, but that just isn’t true.
91
00:11:24.740 –> 00:11:30.100
And as you rightly say, you know, individuals returning to work, everyone’s different.
92
00:11:30.460 –> 00:11:33.320
Everyone will have different things that they’re processing.
93
00:11:33.580 –> 00:11:43.020
But one thing that we know can make their journey back to work more difficult is if the people around them find it difficult to engage with them.
94
00:11:43.020 –> 00:11:48.440
So that will only increase this sense of isolation and loneliness.
95
00:11:48.960 –> 00:11:58.980
And that obviously can have a significant repercussions on their recovery, how they move forwards and how they’re feeling within themselves.
96
00:11:59.500 –> 00:12:07.820
We now do an awful lot of training with organisations, not for the individual who’s been impacted by cancer,
97
00:12:07.820 –> 00:12:17.720
but training everyone else to build knowledge, to build understanding so that they have the confidence so that when Matthew comes into the office,
98
00:12:18.380 –> 00:12:25.560
rather than avoid him because I’m worried I’m going to say the wrong thing, I will go up to you and I will have a conversation with you.
99
00:12:26.140 –> 00:12:35.020
And a lot of this is about, and it’s a conversation I know we’ve had before, is about understanding how to really actively listen to someone.
100
00:12:35.580 –> 00:12:40.520
Because you can’t say to someone, this is how you have the conversation with someone.
101
00:12:40.560 –> 00:12:43.920
Use these words. It doesn’t work like that.
102
00:12:44.380 –> 00:12:47.780
Some people talk about battling cancer.
103
00:12:48.340 –> 00:12:51.380
Some people hate it when you use the term battle.
104
00:12:51.920 –> 00:13:00.980
So if I’m an active listener, I’m hearing the language you use and I’ve heard you use terms like, you know, winning against cancer.
105
00:13:00.980 –> 00:13:12.520
I can reflect that language in the conversation I have with you and it will make the conversation more productive and inevitably you will feel more supported.
106
00:13:13.060 –> 00:13:17.340
So we as a charity are doing more work there.
107
00:13:17.360 –> 00:13:27.900
So it’s taking all that learning experience from Cancer Coach, listening to people who have had that lived experience and imparting a lot of that knowledge,
108
00:13:28.620 –> 00:13:37.080
along with some basic skills and techniques that everybody can use, because that’s the scale of what we’re dealing with.
109
00:13:37.220 –> 00:13:42.880
And if we want to create, back to where I started, as to why we exist as a charity,
110
00:13:43.360 –> 00:13:52.820
if we really want to create a kinder world for people who have been impacted directly and indirectly by cancer, this is what we need to do.
111
00:14:00.580 –> 00:14:04.700
Thanks to the National Lottery Community Fund for supporting this podcast.
112
00:14:04.980 –> 00:14:13.880
So you were listening to Mark Gaimer there from Cancer Support UK and we will hear more from him in the future.
113
00:14:14.100 –> 00:14:26.940
Now, last week on our introductory first episode, I was playing you some excerpts from interviews with people such as Nicky Lampshire from The Cove, Mark Gaimer as well.
114
00:14:26.940 –> 00:14:31.500
Emma Coombe, who you hear with a few little jingles here and there.
115
00:14:31.600 –> 00:14:43.960
Harry Glasson, Cornwall My Home composer, and Amanda Winwood, who is based at the Health and Wellbeing Innovation Centre.
116
00:14:44.780 –> 00:14:53.580
And she has a company which works to produce lots of cosmetics and therapies for people going through cancer.
117
00:14:53.580 –> 00:14:58.320
It was lovely to talk to her and I think there could be a video coming up.
118
00:14:58.660 –> 00:15:00.460
But what about some of the other people?
119
00:15:00.500 –> 00:15:02.760
Let’s give you a few more excerpts.
120
00:15:03.260 –> 00:15:10.780
So we have done a little bit of videoing and we have recorded a podcast with Mark Harris.
121
00:15:11.100 –> 00:15:23.100
Now, he runs the Potterser Garden at Constantine, where Macmillan through The Cove have been running some therapy sessions in their garden.
122
00:15:23.100 –> 00:15:26.240
I’ve been to some and it’s been wonderful.
123
00:15:26.300 –> 00:15:30.380
Let’s have a listen to Mark Harris, who runs that project.
124
00:15:30.800 –> 00:15:42.420
So Potterser is a demonstration organic garden that was created amid the remains of an abandoned plant nursery in 1999, 2000.
125
00:15:42.900 –> 00:15:49.140
Dan and Peter had been travelling in France and were inspired by the ornamental style of growing productively.
126
00:15:49.140 –> 00:15:53.320
And they brought their ideas back to this abandoned plot in Cornwall.
127
00:15:53.780 –> 00:15:54.340
Dan and Peter.
128
00:15:54.620 –> 00:16:00.820
Dan and Peter co-founders of Potterser Garden and Peter now one of the directors of the social enterprise.
129
00:16:02.040 –> 00:16:06.440
Dan lives in France and so is still involved in the project, but from afar.
130
00:16:06.980 –> 00:16:13.220
And where did the idea come to have a collaboration with Macmillan?
131
00:16:13.280 –> 00:16:19.120
As long as it goes, probably six or seven years ago, maybe a little bit longer, we decided that the future of this place needed
132
00:16:19.120 –> 00:16:29.640
to formalise in some way what we offered in terms of the volunteer gardening and to make it available to a greater diversity of people.
133
00:16:30.320 –> 00:16:38.500
Our volunteer group, they’re very rarely room to join as a volunteer because volunteers, many of them have been coming for, I mean, a few of them for more than a decade now.
134
00:16:39.160 –> 00:16:47.920
But the benefits of gardening and of working and of eating and cooking together and sharing meals together, we decided that it has a clearly beneficial effect.
135
00:16:47.920 –> 00:16:50.900
And we wanted to bring that to more people.
136
00:16:51.160 –> 00:17:01.900
And so we started a social enterprise and sought funding from a few sources, initially in Cornwall from the Community Capacity Fund, who helped us with a feasibility study
137
00:17:03.120 –> 00:17:08.920
before then approaching the National Lottery Community Fund and the Community Leveling Up programme.
138
00:17:09.880 –> 00:17:15.359
And one way or another, we were very nearly there already in terms of the environment that we have and the facilities we have.
139
00:17:16.119 –> 00:17:20.980
But the little bit of extra help has managed to get us started working with a few different groups.
140
00:17:21.900 –> 00:17:25.119
One of which is the Cove at Macmillan.
141
00:17:25.220 –> 00:17:31.860
Mark Harris there from the Potterser Garden at Constantine, which is working with the Cove.
142
00:17:32.040 –> 00:17:36.780
Now, we’ll have more from him in an upcoming episode.
143
00:17:37.080 –> 00:17:39.220
So look out for that one.
144
00:17:39.720 –> 00:17:52.540
Now, something else we’ll do in this programme is listen to Emma and Claire, who provide music therapy at the Cove.
145
00:17:53.020 –> 00:18:03.140
And we’ve had an interview done with them and we’ve even done some music therapy music with them for this podcast.
146
00:18:03.240 –> 00:18:06.480
So let’s give you a little dip into that one as well.
147
00:18:06.480 –> 00:18:55.650
There you go. Some music therapy run by Emma and Claire.
148
00:18:56.310 –> 00:19:06.310
And we will be listening to the full interview and some more of the music therapy music in an upcoming podcast.
149
00:19:06.450 –> 00:19:10.390
So that’s something else to listen out for.
150
00:19:11.070 –> 00:19:17.550
And next week, I will be introducing a co-presenter, Emma Coom.
151
00:19:17.550 –> 00:19:22.730
And you heard her voice in the little jingles in this programme.
152
00:19:23.390 –> 00:19:29.810
So Emma Coom next week on the Cornwall Cancer Cafe podcast.
153
00:19:30.070 –> 00:19:36.150
Thank you for listening and we will be back next week with a big hug for you.
154
00:19:39.900 –> 00:19:43.400
Here to support you, the Cornwall Cancer Cafe podcast.
155
00:19:44.620 –> 00:19:48.840
Thanks to the National Lottery Community Fund for supporting this podcast.