Celebrating the skill, dedication and impact of nurses
Jo and Jeanette are Chief Nurses for both CCLG: The Children & Young People’s Cancer Association and Young Lives vs Cancer (funder). Both charities are working collaboratively to shape a better future for children and young people with cancer, and to support nurses and health care professionals working in the specialty.
Both have decades of experience nursing in the NHS and are now using their expertise in the charity sector, in senior leadership roles, to influence change and improvements in cancer care from diagnosis through treatment and beyond.
Jo collaborates with nurses to support them in the development of practice guidance and improvements for teenage and young adult (TYA) patients. She provides clinical perspectives and understanding to multi-professional and non-clinical colleagues, highlighting the challenges young people face during cancer treatment and the reality of working on a TYA unit.
She is passionate about driving change and improvements in cancer services for young people. Through CCLG special interest groups, Jo brings together expert nurses, creating a powerful network driving progress to advance TYA cancer care, creating essential resources and eLearning education for professionals.
Jo Stark
Similarly, Jeanette coordinates leadership of the nursing programme for those working in children’s services, and parallel’s Jo’s work for paediatrics. Much of this involves adapting resources available in adult cancer nursing for the benefit of children’s services.
Jeanette is currently supervising two nurses seconded from the NHS to update the Telephone Triage Toolkit (TTT). This model helps to develop the skills of the next generation of nurses in project management and quality improvement techniques, which will ultimately have a broader impact when they return to their NHS roles.
Jeanette has also led the development of Career and Education Frameworks for children’s nurses, building skills across all levels of cancer nursing through nationally agreed competency standards.
Jeanette Hawkins
Both Jo and Jeanette strategically represent CCLG and Young Lives vs Cancer in national groups to share insights on aspects of cancer care for the young, influencing on a wider scale. This ranges from NHS Operational Delivery Network Meetings, the NHS Cancer Charity Forum, Cancer 52 meetings, RCN Children’s Nursing Partnerships UK, Cancer Patient Experience (CPES) and under 16s CPES. Sometimes it involves providing evidence to relevant consultations, such as informing the 10-year Cancer plan for England and Children and Young People’s Cancer Taskforce.
They draw in social care expertise from Young Lives vs Cancer and clinical expertise from CCLG to help set standards, advise, influence, and advocate for excellence locally, nationally and sometime globally. Global work has seen the uptake of the TTT in other countries, support for a QI project in Ghana through SIOP (the International Society of Paediatric Oncology), and participation in the global Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Congress.
Thank you so much to Jeanette and Jo, and all the nurses that support children and young people with cancer every day, for everything you do to make positive change happen, from everyone at Young Lives vs Cancer and CCLG.
