In 2014 the Central Cancer Network NZ looked at how it could improve the psychological and social care its population was receiving. The project vision was people with cancer and their carers experienced an integrated and coordinated system of continued supportive care, overseen by an educated workforce, to ease the social consequences arising from their experience with cancer and to enhance their quality of life.
The project underwent a consultative co design process with consumers and key workforce stakeholders and developed a Supportive Care Framework which includes an agreed set of overarching principles and components of supportive care delivery (The Model) which are implemented in a patient centred, consistent and quality manner (The Standards) to ensure the supportive care needs of patients and their family/whanau are continually identified and addressed (The Tools and Resources) by an informed, skilled and cared for workforce (The Workforce Plan). The principles of the project were to ensure that what was developed had to reflect the NZ context. That international work could provide guidance but that it needed to be more reflective of the principles of bi cultural and holistic practice to support the needs of the population. That by utilising this approach we would guard against the use of international work which hadn’t been adapted to the cultural context and were increasing inequities because of their cultural bias.
What has emerged is a person centred framework which a person affected by cancer as well as all levels of the workforce can identify with and which lays the groundwork for ongoing collaborative practice. Its process of creation has laid foundations for this work and provided acknowledgment to the workforce as the value they bring to the cancer journey. Supportive Care is on its way to becoming a measurable and therefore improvable concept in 2015.