Tailored nutrition support for families

This year, the introduction of nutrition support will be a huge benefit to families impacted by childhood cancer, like Joyce and Josh who know how important good food is for recovery and general health.

Their son, Arlo was just 18 months when diagnosed with B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia in 2022.

Eating became difficult for Arlo almost immediately with taste changes due to chemo, with taste changes, mouth ulcers and general nausea from treatment.

Joyce and Josh followed the doctor's recommendation to try to get as many calories in as possible, with Arlo eating primarily chicken nuggets, hot chips and plain pasta.

After frontline treatment finished, the focus shifted back to trying to get Arlo to eat his original varied diet and more nutritionally balanced meals.

However, after months of only eating his “safe” foods, Arlo had developed aversions to anything that varied from what he knew.

He also had a dependency on warm honey water that had got him through many hospital nights, and soothed an array of coughs and sore throats that came with being so immunocompromised for such a long period of time.

Joyce was advised they could be referred to a nutritionist, but that there was no tailored program for oncology patients.

She says: “Unfortunately the hospital doesn’t really have the resources to support parents in transitioning our children back to “normal” eating and there are no programs easily accessible and tailored to children post cancer treatment.

"We’ve done the best we can to change Arlo’s eating behaviours, but we are still working through food dependencies, an emotional attachment to a baby bottle and aversions gained during treatment.

"The nutrition support program is something that we are so passionate and excited about as a family. It will have such a huge impact on something that’s so important to long term health but considered “auxiliary” during treatment."

Joyce and Josh hope that this new service will set children up for good health post treatment, and will assist parents in learning techniques and strategies for weaning kids off comfort, calorie dense foods and back on to a more balanced diet.

Our ability to offer this new service to families like Arlo’s is only thanks to the generosity of our wonderful community of donors.

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