Club Meeting at Copper

17th February 2022 Maggie’s Centre Support – Annie Walton

We were very privileged to hear a talk from a passionate professional carer, who clearly loves her job. Annie has a background of nursing for over 33 years in the oncology environment.  However, as she progressed to a senior level, she felt that she was losing touch with patients. This created a scary situation for herself in leaving          the secure NHS environment, a life changing move. Suddenly she found herself in the situation of having to find a way to introduce people to the Maggie’s Centre.  A task she managed very well, increasing new members by 40% in 6 months…but then the pandemic arrived, causing the operation to close for 5 weeks, and with GP’s doing ‘telephone consultations’ with the loss of potential new members.

She remembered clearly how she and two colleagues made 65 telephone calls to people who had been bereaved through cancer. They then turned to Zoom, which was a big learning process, regarding ‘muted’, camera control and they recognised they need to get back to face to face support.  This impacted noticeably with children’s involvement and they started two support groups, one from baby to 17 years old and 17 and above.

She invited us to drop in to have a look at the centre at any time, they don’t operate an appointment system, there’s plenty of space, rooms and their ethos is: “just come in”.  They are able to give clarification on treatment plans as they are all qualified cancer nurses and additionally have a clinical psychologist to help with difficult cases. In traumatic situations it is doubtful that more than 12% of diagnosis and chemotherapy plans are understood and retained, we are all unique individuals with different experiences. They have “lone parent” support groups, “vibrant men’s group”, and an “expressive art group”.

There are 24 similar centres around the country, with 5 more planned and 3 or 4 international centres in Hong Kong, Japan and Barcelona.  All the centres are designed by famous architects with “architecture of Hope” as their underlying theme, to provide a light, large, open environment away from the clinical hospital type.

They are all funded by their local community, but need serious major donors for the initial set up and Maggie’s Centre needs around £600k per annum to maintain.

They run a number of workshops: living with stress; sleeplessness; chronic fatigue; anxiety, bereavement.  It’s all about talking and sharing experiences

Adrian gave the vote of thanks having experienced Maggie’s centre when his Mum was suffering about 5 years ago.  He said it one of those places you don’t know about, until you need it.  Despite Annie confessing that she knew Doug, Adrian asked the members to congratulate her in the normal manner with resounding applause. Matters concluded with President Gordon making a cheque presentation to Annie for the Maggie’s Centre and the magnificent work they do.                                                           AR