Wellbeing4You

To inform, support, inspire and enable you and our community to live better with and beyond cancer

What can the Wellbeing4You team do for me?

The Wellbeing4You Team helps you move from cancer treatment to living well after cancer. After your cancer treatment ends, you'll be invited to join the programme. We offer a 4-week programme in the community, where you'll get personal support from a team of health and social care experts. You'll attend sessions that give you and your loved ones the tools and knowledge to feel stronger and improve your quality of life.

Meet the team!

I work in Cancer Services within Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust. I am the Macmillan Psychosocial Lead and I have worked in this role for over 17 years. My main duties include offering psychosocial support to patients and their families to address their emotional, social, practical and spiritual needs. This includes cancer patients who are curative, metastatic, palliative or those who have finished active treatment.

I have been working within DGS NHS Trust Cancer Services for the past 14 years and in my current role as the Trust’s Macmillan Oncology Specialist Dietitian since 2015.

I am professionally qualified to conduct clinical dietary assessment of adults and to provide evidence-based and practical nutrition education and advice to both individuals and groups of people. In particular, I identify and address clinical nutrition-related issues (that can often arise resulting from of a cancer diagnosis and/or side effects of its treatment) and focus on promoting healthy eating and drinking behaviours to help optimise living well beyond a cancer diagnosis/treatment. I thrive working as part of a multidisciplinary team and am especially delighted to be involved with our Wellbeing4You Programme, both in its initial development and its continued delivery.

I have worked with cancer patients for approximately five years and have a passion for working with this client group. My role as a Senior Occupational Therapist is to enable patients to achieve meaningful occupations. By helping patients to develop, recover, improve and maintain the skills needed to execute daily activities, when a condition or injury has had an impact on their function.

I have been working at Darent Valley since 2018 and specifically the Wellbeing4You team since 2020. My role focuses on improving patient’s respiratory and physical health, providing education and advice on how to manage ongoing symptoms and facilitating onwards referrals to local services such as pulmonary rehabilitation and outpatient physiotherapy. I encourage this cohort of patients’ to become as physically active as possible to not only improve quality of life but also facilitate self-determination and allow patients to gain more independence.

Content to be added soon.

Programme Synopsis:

The programme runs on a 4-week cycle.

Week 1: Initial discussion with a multidisciplinary team member.
Weeks 2-4: Educational and support sessions covering topics like managing side effects, improving quality of life, and accessing onward referrals or 1:1 support as needed.

Session Overview:

The Impact of Living Beyond Cancer: Discuss feelings after treatment, like anxiety, loneliness, and joy.
Fatigue Management & Optimising Pain Management: Advice on managing fatigue and pain without medication.
Healthy Eating, Healthy Weight: Explore what a healthy diet means and its importance post-cancer.
Managing Breathlessness: Techniques to manage breathlessness, which affects many patients.
The Importance of Sleep: Strategies to improve sleep quality post-cancer.
Diet/Nutrition Myths and Cancer: Navigating diet information and myths related to cancer.
Getting Active after Cancer – Not Just Surviving but Thriving: Tips on becoming more active after treatment.