Macmillan general manager, Vicki Price, speaks to startrescue.co.uk

On Monday 18^th July the newly appointed general manager of Macmillan Cancer Support, Vicki Price, came to visit startrescue.co.uk to meet with staff and congratulate us on our fund raising achievements. We took the opportunity to ask her a few questions during her visit – you can view  the conversation below.

startrescue.co.uk is proud to be supporting Macmillan and to have donated over £16,000 over the past 11 months. How does this achievement help the valuable work of Macmillan in their provision of cancer support?

Over £16k of raised income pays for over 500 hours of a Macmillan nurse. To give you an idea of the impact that has, its important to understand what a Macmillan nurse actually does. They offer very practical support in helping people affected by cancer, live or indeed die the way they choose. Only last week my very own Cousin who was at the end of her life, wanted to come home and in order to do that, the Macmillan nurse organised for a hospital bed to be put into her downstairs room, along with a commode.Due to the communication and coordination of the district nurse & GP, as well as information and instruction from the hospital, all of this meant she would have been able to come home and it probably took the Macmillan nurse 4 or 5 hours to organise. Imagine how many of these chunks of hours she can give to a variety of people affected by cancer.

Can you give us some examples of how this money will go towards supporting a cancer sufferer? 

Over £16k could also pay for over 40 grants at an average amount of £400, typically this could pay for a wig, a specially adapted swimsuit for someone that has had a mastectomy, new clothes, child care or simply increased costs of heating (generally when people are having chemotherapy they get very cold, especially in the winter)

Another shocking fact is that most people are £570 a month worse off as a result of the costs of cancer, such things as travel, either having to give up work or reduce hours or indeed a family member stopping work altogether to care for someone during their treatment.

How important is the partnership with startrescue.co.uk and your partnerships with other companies in general?

Working with companies has endless benefits to both parties. Mainly, by working together locally and developing communities of people who help to raise money for the very people who can and will benefit from the services. Companies will help to increase awareness of the services we offer (such as the leaflets I gave you) essentially we can raise 100s of £100,000,000s but if people don't know what services we have, it's worthless.

Can you tell us a little about what the future holds for Macmillan Cancer Support?

With over 200 different types of cancers affecting more and more people every day, one of the biggest challenges we face as a charity is how to ensure we are there for as many people as possible. You will see our current 'not alone' advertising campaign kick off in the summer, but we will be working on our next campaign to get the right messages to people with and people affected by cancer.