£10 million financial taxpayer-funded support package for families of children and young people with cancer to cover travel costs to and from appointments
Children with cancer will have their travel costs paid for, with a new taxpayer-funded support package worth up to £10 million a year.
For every parent of a child with cancer, each day presents real challenges, not only in confronting the disease itself, but also in managing the considerable demands and costs associated with transporting their child for specialist treatment.
More than a third of these families must travel over an hour to reach hospital. There are 13 expert centres caring for children with cancer across England, with many young patients and their families face long and frequent journeys, sometimes several times a week, over many months or even years.
The financial burden can be significant, with petrol costs, train fares and lost earnings making an already difficult time, even harder. For some families, it could mean money that means heating their home for fewer hours, or going without fresh, nutritious food at dinner time. These are choices no parent should ever be forced to make.
Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said:
While wealthier families may absorb these costs, for those worrying about the cost of living, the impact can be overwhelming.
Through the National Cancer Plan, the government will provide £10 million a year of taxpayer-funded support for a new fund open to all children and young people with cancer and their families regardless of income to support them with the cost of travelling to and from cancer care.
It will help people like Emma Wilding, from West Lancashire, whose son Theo was diagnosed with Infant Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia in October 2024 when he was only five months old.
Alder Hey Children’s hospital is 45 minutes away from their family home, which meant they had to spend a great deal of time and money on travel in addition to paying for parking at the hospital.
She said:
This commitment sits alongside decisive action to transform cancer care for children and young people; including improving hospital food, ensuring medical psychosocial care during treatment, expanding genomic testing, and detecting cancers earlier when treatment is most effective.
Professor Peter Johnson, National Clinical Director for Cancer at NHS England, said:
The upcoming national NHS food standards review will ensure young cancer patients have access to high-quality, child-friendly food, including outside mealtimes.
The government will also improve the experience of those children who have to stay in hospital. The NHS and Starlight’s Play Well toolkit will help services deliver high-quality play provision for children, while youth support coordinators will help teenagers and young adults with education, emotional support and fertility concerns.
Furthermore, mental health support will be standardised for all young cancer patients during diagnosis, treatment and long-term follow-up, recognising the experience of cancer often surfaces years after treatment ends.
Taken together, these measures will ensure that when a child faces cancer, their family can focus on what matters most, being by their side and helping them get well.
This follows a series of reforms announced as part of the National Cancer Plan, including measures to improve access to specialists in rural and coastal communities, a crackdown on illegal underage sunbed use, improved bowel cancer screening to catch thousands more cases earlier and a new partnership to support England’s 830,000 working-age cancer patients to remain in employment during and after treatment.
The plan will be published tomorrow and will set out further steps the government is taking to catch cancer earlier, treat it faster, and prevent it in the first place. Since coming to office, the government has already delivered 5 million extra NHS appointments, and 213,000 more patients have received a cancer diagnosis within the 28 day target.
Rachel Kirby-Rider, Chief Executive Officer of Young Lives vs Cancer, said:
Jules Worrall, Interim Chief Executive of Teenage Cancer Trust, said:
Mr Ashley Ball-Gamble, Chief Executive of The Children & Young People’s Cancer Association, said:
Gail Jackson, Chief Executive Officer of Solving Kids Cancer, said:
Dr Sharna Shanmugavadivel, Early diagnosis fellow at CCLG: The Children & Young People’s Cancer Association and vice-chair of the Children and Young People’s Taskforce at DHSC, said:
Dr Timothy Ritzmann, Clinical Associate Professor in Paediatric NeuroOncology and Cancer Biology, University of Nottingham, and CCLG-funded researcher, said:
The support will help people like Tim Sadler, from Gloucestershire, whose son Michael was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia in April 2014 just days before his third birthday and went on to have three years of treatment.
Tim sat on the patient group in the Children and Young People Cancer Taskforce and has supported the Young Lives vs Cancer’s campaign for a Young Cancer Patient Travel Fund for the past eight years. Tim says today’s news of financial support for travel costs is the help families like his have been waiting for:
The support will also help people like Victoria Ward, a young cancer survivor from the Isle of Wight, who was diagnosed with Lymphoma at 21.
Victoria would have to travel from her home to Southampton General Hospital via ferry and then drive or take a taxi to the hospital once she reached the mainland. The return ferry ticket alone could cost anywhere between £80 to £200 at peak times. Victoria had to stop working and struggled to face these costs alongside her house costs, which led to her giving up her flat. Victoria said:
Editor's Note: The government pays for nothing. Everything it spends comes from taxpayers. It wants you to believe it is paying for everything so that you feel grateful—and therefore compliant.
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