More people than ever are living with and beyond cancer. Receiving care that is tailored to a person’s needs can have a significant impact on their experience and quality of life. The National Cancer Plan commits to driving up quality of life for people with cancer.

Cancer Alliances are working with system partners to ensure that every person receives personalised care and support from cancer diagnosis onwards. Key areas of this work are:

• Providing personalised care and support planning and interventions, including delivering more and better cancer services in the community
• Extending personalised stratified follow up care, including patient initiated follow-up, to all appropriate cancer pathways
• Reducing the impact of cancer and its treatment, including improving support for people’s psychosocial needs, encouraging physical activity across the cancer pathway and prehabilitation and rehabilitation services.

Experience of care

The experience that a person has of their care, treatment and support is one of the three parts of high-quality care, alongside clinical effectiveness and safety.

We work to improve experience of care for all that are affected by cancer, and their family and unpaid carers, by using feedback, sharing examples of good practice and working together to support people, networks and communities to make improvements.

We ask health care providers and systems to:

• make sure their plans and work programmes aim to improve experience of cancer care, tackle health inequalities, improve staff experience and support unpaid carers;
• support and encourage people, from all backgrounds, to provide feedback on their cancer care and treatment; and,
• work with people with relevant lived experience to make improvements together based on what matters most to patients, and their families and carers.

The Cancer Patient Experience Survey

The Cancer Patient Experience Survey (CPES) for adults 16 years and above is sent out every year to ask a sample of people about their recent experiences of NHS cancer care and treatment. The survey covers all NHS trusts that provide adult cancer services in England.  It has been designed to monitor national progress on experience of cancer care; to provide information to drive local quality improvements to assist commissioners and providers of cancer care; and to inform the work of the various charities and stakeholder groups supporting cancer patients.

The results from previous surveys are available on the CPES website. You can also find more information about the survey and how to get support completing the survey, along with other ways to provide feedback on cancer care.

The Under 16 Cancer Patient Experience Survey

The Under 16 Cancer Patient Experience Survey is a more recent national survey, to gather feedback from children and young people under 16 years of age and their parents/carers on their experience of cancer care and treatment. This helps us to understand what is good about children and young people’s cancer care and identify how we can make improvements.

The Under 16 Cancer Patient Experience Survey has been developed following extensive testing with children with cancer, and parents/carers of children with cancer, as well as cancer charities and other experts.

Results are published on the Under 16 Cancer Patient Experience Survey website, capturing the experiences of care for children and young people under 16 and their parents/carers from Principal Treatment Centres in England. You can find more information about the survey and how to get support completing the survey, along with other ways to provide feedback on cancer care.

The Cancer Experience of Care Improvement Collaboratives

The Cancer Experience of Care Improvement Collaborative, first launched in 2019, brings together groups of cancer healthcare professionals and people with lived experience from different organisations to improve services and the experience of care for people affected by cancer (including friends and family who may provide care and support). Project teams are able to make improvements based on what matters to people who use cancer services that align with local, regional, and national priorities.

Watch one of the CIC project teams talking about their work.