LETTER: Please help young and vulnerable cancer sufferers

Isolated and highly vulnerable children with cancer desperately need your help. Every day we spend in isolation during the coronavirus outbreak, young cancer patients and their families are in crisis struggling with the huge emotional and financial impacts of cancer and coronavirus. Without support during this pandemic, the strain of a child’s cancer diagnosis will push local families to breaking point.

As the UK’s leading cancer charity for children and young people with cancer, CLIC Sargent has launched an emergency appeal as we continue to fight tirelessly for young people with cancer. But we can’t do that without the vital support of the local community in Staffordshire. CLIC Sargent, which relies entirely on voluntary donations, is facing a staggering 60 per cent drop in income, but the vulnerability of the young people we support is increasing. We urgently need readers to please donate today to help us continue to be there for families.

We have never been so busy. Families are so worried how they will cope financially and parents are anxious about their children being so vulnerable to coronavirus. It’s completely heart-breaking. They need us now more than ever. During the pandemic we’re having to find new ways to provide urgent support to families in isolation who desperately need us, at a time when we have had to cancel local fundraising events too.

In these uncertain times, feeding yourself and your child who has cancer should not be one of those uncertainties. Since the start of the pandemic in the UK, CLIC Sargent has given more than £45,000 in emergency grants to young cancer patients and their families to help them pay for essentials such as food and bills.

You can help by donating today and provide a lifeline for young cancer patients and their families. To support CLIC visit clicsargent.org.uk/donate.

Joe Burns, CLIC Sargent Fundraising Engagement Manager for Staffordshire