In response to Jacqui McBurnie's letter in The Border Mail on July 13: "Foundation has lost sight". Firstly, I'm pleased the Leukaemia Foundation was able to support you and your family when your son Hunter was diagnosed with leukaemia. I'm also very pleased to hear he is doing better and has returned home and back to his community, friends and family.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
It may be of interest to you that we currently have two other families from Albury-Wodonga currently staying at the same Leukaemia Foundation Victorian Accommodation Village with another Albury-Wodonga family due to arrive next week.
I wish to also thank you for your extraordinary fundraising efforts. As we do not receive any direct government funding, money raised from families like yours allows us to continue to support the many other families from regional Australia who also need to travel to access treatment.
Last year alone we provided over 50,000 nights worth of accommodation around the country. More than 1000 of those nights were provided to families from the Albury-Wodonga region at a cost of over $102,400. The commercial value of that accommodation is of course much higher. In addition to this we also supported 20 local Albury-Wodonga families with financial assistance. In total, over the past 12 months we provided the Albury-Wodonga community with over 750 support services, valued at over $140,300. This is across all our services including face to face and telephone emotional and educational support, transport services and accommodation to ensure local patients and families could access their treatment. All our services are free of charge.
The Leukaemia Foundation is very much committed to advocating for and supporting regional and remote patients and families. I understand concern that our services are rescinding, however please be assured this is not the case. The Foundation has been conducting extensive research on how we can better support the needs of people living with blood cancer and advocate for access to new therapies and improved treatment.
We are currently developing new ways to support patients and families based on their feedback, so we remain relevant during their whole journey with blood cancer. Whilst we will not be placing a blood cancer support coordinator in Albury-Wodonga at this time, this does not mean in any way that we will no longer support the region, nor will we solely rely on a 1800 number. We will continue to review the referral loads and look at the best allocation of resources to ensure patients and families are appropriately supported across the country.
Our Blood Cancer Support Coordinators will be visiting Albury-Wodonga on Thursday August 9 for face-to-face meetings with patients and key members of the blood cancer community. Further, they will be back again in the region during the first week of September for a Wellbeing Blood Cancer seminar and support group. All ongoing visits and support continue to be at no cost. We will continue to have a strong presence in the community and this can only continue with the support and referrals from local health professionals.
It's important to clarify that our Blood Cancer Support Coordinators are not nurses and the role is not clinical in nature - rather we work alongside health professionals and haematologists providing complimentary support services.
