NHS England is currently consulting on plans to make changes to the way cancer services for children, teenagers and young adults are organised. It’s a priority area in the NHS Long Term Plan with good reason. Cancer services for children, teenagers and young adults are better than they have ever been and continue to improve – but we want to make them even better, particularly in three key areas. Firstly, while survival rates are higher than they have ever been, we know we have further to go to match some other European countries. Secondly, we know we need to ensure new clinical developments, such as genomic medicine and immunotherapy, are properly integrated into clinical pathways and multi-disciplinary teams so that every child, teenager and young adult is able to benefit from cutting-edge technologies, no matter where they live. Thirdly, we want every child, teenager and young adult to have an excellent experience of care. At present, we don’t have consistent ways of capturing patient experience for this group, but what we do know suggests there are opportunities to do better. Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash The consultation on proposed changes to the service specifications for children’s cancer services and teenager and young adults cancer services (TYA) went live on 5 June, and runs until 4 August 2019. NHS England have organised a series of webinars for young people, their families and a range of professionals which can be booked by clicking the links in the dates below. This will give them the opportunity to talk through the plans so that people can ask questions before they respond to the consultation. These are free to join, and to take part you will need access to a computer / laptop and a phone – unfortunately iPads and other most other tablets do not work for webinars. Full instructions will be sent to everyone who has registered, so it’s not a problem If you’ve never joined a webinar before.
