The County Durham Macmillan Joining the Dots team welcomed Gemma Peters, Chief Executive Officer of Macmillan and her Senior Leadership Team recently to showcase their exceptional work with people who have a cancer diagnosis; supporting them to access the help they need, when they need it.
The team at Joining the Dots offer support and information around family and relationships, physical quality of life, lifestyle changes, emotional wellbeing, spiritual and religious links as well as practical and financial guidance and aim to ‘join the dots’ between other vital clinical and practical services. As well as supporting clients with a cancer diagnosis, we also work with those directly affected such as family members, friends and colleagues. Since 2018 they have supported over 3,400 people directly affected by cancer.
Gemma Peters, Chief Executive of Macmillan Cancer Support said: “I would like to thank Joining the Dots for inviting me to come and see first-hand the amazing work they are doing in the North East. Their commitment to supporting their communities which are facing some of the poorest cancer outcomes in the UK is extraordinary.
“We are looking forward to working in partnership with them, their communities and Macmillan professionals across primary and secondary care to develop and test solutions which will make a difference because it doesn’t have to be this way.”
Keen to explain why the project has gone from strength to strength in County Durham, Joining the Dots Coordinator, Chloe Shaw, said: “Our Facilitators have a unique skillset and huge local knowledge, and their clients’ needs are at the very core of what they deliver. Each client has a Holistic Needs Assessment carried out to help us determine what support they need. Our team’s strength lies in understanding that their clients’ needs may change and that often they don’t know what support is available until they start this conversation.”
The Joining the Dots team also deliver the Help to Overcome Problems Effectively (HOPE) course which has been developed by Macmillan Cancer Support and Coventry University and is offered to clients after cancer treatment. Gemma and her Senior Leadership Team had the pleasure of meeting three clients who gave a powerful account of the unique nature of the support they received from Joining the Dots and the HOPE course they attended. They discussed that they hadn’t realised they would need extra support once their cancer treatment was over and how they each benefitted in different ways from the course, which they continue to effectively apply in their daily lives.
One client said: “I was unable to talk to my family about how I felt or what I was going through, I didn’t want to moan. The HOPE course allowed me to meet with other people who had been through similar experiences and who understood what I was going through. We’ve all stayed in touch since the course and continue to support each other.”
Speaking about the day Vicki Moffat, Joining the Dots Programme Manager said: “I am immensely proud of the Joining the Dots team for their dedication to providing a caring, compassionate and tailored service to their clients. They are the reason Joining the Dots continues to provide such dynamic support for people living with and beyond cancer. I also want to thank Gemma and her team for making the time to meet the team and to listen to our clients’ stories.”
To find out more about Joining the Dots, visit their website at www.joiningthedots.info or email them at cddft.joiningthedots@nhs.net
The Pioneering Care Partnership (PCP) delivers Joining the Dots with the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust.
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