Young Lives vs Cancer

As a young person, a cancer diagnosis can throw you completely off track, making you doubt your future and whether you will ever get back to ‘normal’ life. For parents, it is their biggest nightmare, contemplating whether their child will get better, worrying about the impact on their other children and on top of this, dealing with the stress of their finances.

Phillipa was diagnosed with Burkitts Leukaemia in September 2017 when she was six years old. Mum Hayley and dad Gary faced a 160-mile round trip from the family’s home to get their daughter to hospital in Southampton, where they were based for 10 months. During this time Hayley and Gary would travel back and forth to look after their three children and two established businesses — Handy Hardware and High Tides — at home in East Sussex.

“The back and forth trips and staying in Southampton had a big impact on our businesses and our other children. We have an ice-cream shop which isn’t open in the winter and a hardware shop. Gary and I both stopped working so we lost a lot of money from our businesses.

We didn’t have a clue about the financial impact; it’s not one of the first things you think about when you are told your child as cancer. For us it just wasn’t a priority because you are focussed on your child, it wasn’t until our CLIC Sargent social worker Nicky put all the support in front of us that we realised it does have a massive impact.

Without Nicky, we could have lost our businesses and our family could have broken down completely.”

CLIC Sargent’s research shows parents spend an average of £600 more every month when their child has cancer. Lots of travel for treatment, hotels, extra heating costs. It soon adds up.

That’s why CLIC Sargent is here. We stop cancer destroying young lives. We understand how devastating cancer is, not just for the child or young person but for the whole family.

We have great ambitions for young lives against cancer — to limit the isolation, debt and fear of the future cancer can cause. But we can’t do any of it without you.

Join our fight. To donate to CLIC Sargent though the sales of your products and services and show cancer your business cares, set up a pledge or make a donation via Work for Good.