As Cancer Connect is a Cancer Society service that slots in well alongside Cancer Chat the two facilitating nurses from Cancer Chat have asked me to jot down a bit about the service. So here goes.
Cancer Connect is a peer support service for people who have a primary cancer diagnosis and their care givers. Cancer Connect is a one-on-one phone service; it is anonymous, first name only. Cancer Connect is free and offers a listening ear, practical information, and the opportunity to talk to someone whose life has been affected by cancer.
Each of the Cancer Connect peer supporters has had cancer, or cared for a loved one living with cancer.
Cancer Connect can be accessed through your local Cancer Society or by phoning the Cancer Information Helpline 0800 226 237
The service has been operating in NZ for about the past six years, we operate this service in conjunction with the Australian Cancer Councils so if we don’t have a suitable match we can look for a volunteer across the Tasman and they can do the same in reverse.
Cancer Connect volunteers are all a couple of years past their own cancer experience and happy to share and support others. Often the volunteers offer their services because they have had a connect themselves and found it helpful. Cancer Connect volunteers do a two day training and attend an annual update day.
We currently have about 70 volunteers in NZ with access to the Australian team which is probably another 400-500 volunteers.
The sorts of things that are discussed are treatment options, so often someone who has a choice of treatment will call and wish to talk with maybe two volunteers who have chosen different types of treatment. Emotions, treatment side effects, partner/family issues, financial issues, survivorship, sexuality, diet/nutrition, children’s responses, self esteem, the list of things that get talked about is endless. The volunteers are able to understand and hear the problems even though they may not have the answer, that understanding of having been in a similar position is the bit that makes this such a special service.
We cannot always get the perfect match. We try to match as well as we can with age, gender, disease type or treatment type, but we cannot always get for example, the same cell type, actual drug or surgery. Sometimes this just too difficult, but from experience it seems that even a less than perfect match can often provide a useful and supportive contact.
If the service sounds like something that would be useful to you please contact us (ph 0800 CANCER 226 237 or info@cancersoc.org.nz) and have a talk.
Meg, Cancer Information Nurse and Cancer Connect NZ coordinator, Cancer Society, Christchurch.
