Liz
How Liz is already helping children with cancer.
My role is to bridge the gap between hospital and home.
When families leave the safety net of the hospital it can be a struggle. They need to remember a huge amount of information about their child’s care and it can be emotionally hard. But getting home is so positive and I am there to provide emotional support as well as co-ordinating all the specialist care the children need.
I visit the child at home or at school to take blood samples, monitor them and plan the next stage of their treatment. I can also give them some of their chemotherapy or antibiotics at home so they make fewer visits to the hospital.
It is important that I spend time with the teaching staff in the child’s school, giving them information about the diagnosis of the child and the treatment they will undergo. How the school supports the child is very important, as it can be one of the only safe or normal places left for the child to be a child.
A diagnosis of cancer affects the whole family. The parents and siblings need the time and space to talk about what is going on and how their world has been turned upside down.
I offer the children, families, teachers and other health care professionals support. They all need it at this time.