FORCE project receives lottery funding

FORCE Cancer Charity is celebrating today after being awarded £290,000 in funding from The National Lottery Community Fund.

The grant will help the charity restart its programme of face-to-face services across Devon and expand a pioneering programme of using specialist volunteers to work alongside its professional staff in support and education programmes.

This new National Lottery funding is for a specific three-year project, which will enable FORCE to reach more local people dealing with a cancer diagnosis while it works to rebuild funding for its core services after COVID.

“Although this project alone won’t secure the future of the entire organisation, it will certainly contribute to the future sustainability of the charity,” said FORCE Chief Executive Meriel Fishwick.

“It represents a step on the road to recovery after the pandemic caused a massive upheaval for our services, especially our outreach projects.”

A key part of the project is to train and deploy Role Specific Volunteers, who have a background in healthcare.

Education

They will work with patients on FORCE education programmes like its ground-breaking groups for Living with Cancer as an Incurable Disease and Moving Forward after cancer treatment.

FORCE oncology support specialist Emma Ellis is putting together the training and education programme for volunteers.

She explained: “We have a wide range of volunteers with expertise and life experience that complement the services we have, both psychological and clinical.

“We have counsellors, clinical psychologists, GPs and nurses willing to donate their time in facilitating some of our groups. Our aim is to give the professional volunteers the extra skills that they might need to lead these groups alongside a member of staff.”

Retired GP Dr Geoff Roberts (pictured) has joined the role specific volunteer team at FORCE.

He said: “This is just a very important thing to do at this point because obviously by using sma

ll groups we can include more people and spread the initiative wider through our population of patients that have been involved with cancer.

Community

“With the NHS under such strain at the moment, clearly I’m happy to use my skills and give time to patients who, maybe in the hurly burly, don’t always have time to express their concerns, their worries and their needs.”

FORCE is based in Exeter but has plans to restart its community services in Okehampton, Mid Devon and Ottery St Mary with the group education programmes becoming a key part of the support package.

The lottery grant will enable FORCE to fund the training and supervision of volunteers and employ a counsellor, nurse and complementary therapist to work in its outreach locations as well as the sundry costs like admin, IT, marketing and travel.

“By involving role specific volunteers in our support and education programmes we believe we can make our services more sustainable and return to the community settings we have had to withdraw from over the last two years,” said Mrs Fishwick.

Needed

“The impact of the pandemic on cancer services has meant that some people have missed curative treatment due to late diagnosis or had little or no support due to lockdowns and altered treatment plans. This has also affected families and children.

“We really want to get back out into our communities and offer face-to-face services in our outreach locations as soon as funds permit because we know that FORCE has never been needed so much.”

National Lottery players raise more than £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. The National Lottery Community Fund distributes a share of this to projects to support people and communities to prosper and thrive.

During the pandemic, in 2020 alone, The National Lottery Community Fund distributed almost £1 billion to charities and community organisations across the UK.

To find out more, visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk