A Children and Young People’s Cancer Plan
We’re on a mission with CCLG – Together, we’ve been calling for a Cancer Plan for England that supports children and young people and makes sure their unique and critical needs are recognised, understood and addressed. We’ve worked in partnership to write a cancer plan for children and young people that addresses all their needs to improve their experiences and outcomes.
Following campaigning from many cancer charities, including Young Lives vs Cancer and CCLG, the UK Government they will create a National Cancer Plan for England, and on World Cancer Day 2025 they confirmed the plan will include children and young people. As well as this, they re-established the Children and Young People Cancer Taskforce. This is a huge step towards making sure children and young people with cancer, and their families, get all the care and support they need and deserve.
But it doesn’t stop here.
Children and young people with cancer know that the impacts of cancer are more than medical and that any National Cancer Plan meets all their financial, emotional and practical needs, alongside providing worldclass medical care.
How can we make this a reality?
The UK Government have opened a call for evidence where you can share your cancer plan priorities.
This is an opportunity to share your experiences and opinions and make it clear that the plan must address the full range of issues faced by young cancer patients and their families – it needs to be more than medical.
- Let the UK Government know your Cancer Plan Priorities
- Your guide to filling in the UK Government Cancer Plan call for evidence.
What sort of issues could I let the Government know about?
Children and young people with cancer face a range of issues that the UK Government should tackle in their cancer plan. You might want to share some of them through the call for evidence. Some examples include:
- Support needed for the extra financial costs faced by young cancer patients and their families
- The need for a Young Cancer Patient Travel Fund to help with the cost of getting to treatment
- Quicker and easier access to welfare and benefits
- Emotional and mental wellbeing support for the whole family
- World class treatment and care
- Earlier diagnosis and better post-treatment support
- You can always use our Children and Young People’s Cancer plan for more inspiration.
We’ve written a longer guide above that takes you step by step through each section of the call for evidence.
It is vital that the Plan includes the psychosocial needs of children and young people with cancer, alongside treatment and care. You can let the UK Government know that the Plan needs to be more than medical through their ‘Call for Evidence’
Cancer is still the biggest killer by disease in the UK of children and young people, and over 4,000 children and young people under 25 are diagnosed every year. It may be less common, but it’s not rare, and it’s different from cancer in older adults. Cancer in children and young people needs different treatment, has distinct financial, practical, emotional and physical impacts. It comes at a key developmental stage in life.
This means the care and support they need is unique and plans that work for older adults just won’t work for them.
We’re pleased that our calls for a Cancer Plan that includes children and young people have been heard. We’re ready to work with UK Government to ensure their Plan delivers the priorities in our Children and Young People’s Cancer Plan.
The plan we have written with CCLG looks at different parts of children and young people’s cancer care including diagnosis, treatment, patient experience, research, psychosocial support, and living beyond cancer. It makes recommendations in these areas that could be used when creating the National Cancer Plan for England. If all these areas are addressed, it could dramatically improve the experiences and outcomes of children and young people and their families.
Each government in each UK nation makes decisions about health. This Children and Young People’s Cancer Plan is aimed at the UK Government and patients receiving treatment and care for cancer in England, but the priorities and recommendations do apply across the entire UK and could be useful in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland when they are considering health plans.
The UK Government’s National Cancer Plan will be for patients in England. The Scottish Government already has a “Cancer Strategy for Children and Young People”, the Northern Ireland Executive has a “Cancer Strategy for Northern Ireland” which includes children and young people. Wales has a Cancer Improvement Plan which does not fully include children and young people (which we’re campaigning to change).
Our plan has been developed by using research and evidence, policy recommendations and clinical insight from Young Lives vs Cancer and the Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group. It also reflects the views and experiences of children and young people with cancer and their families that have been shared with the charities.
The taskforce will “bring together experts to set out plans to improve treatment, detection, and research for cancer in children and young people, which will feed into the National Cancer Plan.” We’re working with the Department of Health to learn more and try and shape this.
The National Cancer Plan for England is due to be published in the spring – summer 2025, and before this they will publish their 10-Year Plan for Health.