Imagine being told within 45 minutes of arriving at the Hospital Emergency Department that your 6-year-old child has cancer.
This was the reality for Christina’s family after her daughter Steph started feeling sick towards the end of the summer school holidays in January 2015.
Steph was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia.
As all their friends started sharing back to school photos of their kids for the new year, Steph’s family were instead facing the journey of Steph’s vicious cancer treatment, which all in all would take two years.
While they could rely on medical treatment for Steph’s cancer diagnosis, her family needed so much more help as they embarked on the journey ahead.
With your generous donation children with cancer, and their families, can access free and ongoing services that are vital to support the entire family's mental health and wellbeing.
Steph’s family were connected to the Childhood Cancer Association the second day after receiving her childhood cancer diagnosis, and were able to access free, ongoing counselling services to ensure the wellbeing of the entire family.
Christina remembers - "As a parent of a child with cancer, your emotional and physical time is spent mostly with your sick child. There isn't a choice. Your other children also miss out on a lot."
Steph’s siblings were able to access the Childhood Cancer Association’s Super Important Brothers and Sisters (SIBS) program, designed to provide emotional support and teach coping strategies to help manage their sister’s cancer diagnosis, as well as giving the children the opportunity to meet with others going through a similar experience.
To ensure this service can remain accessible on an ongoing basis, we must raise $50,000 to continue to deliver vital support to families impacted by childhood cancer.
With no Government funding we can't provide these services without your generous donation. That's why your donation is so important, as it will ensure we can provide ongoing, free of charge care to entire families impacted by childhood cancer.
The Childhood Cancer Association continues to provide ongoing support to entire families just like Steph’s, even after cancer treatment has ended.
"Even now, 9 years after Steph was diagnosed and is well again, we'll get a phone call to check in and see if we're okay. The phone will ring, and I'll look down and see it's the CCA calling, and I'll breathe a sigh of relief and think 'thank goodness they're still there.
All families deserve free of charge, ongoing and immediately accessible support to deal with a childhood cancer diagnosis and across the entire cancer journey, including the ongoing challenges after cancer treatment.
Your donation will ensure we can still ‘be there’ for more than 400 families who receive ongoing support from our team.
