Wellbeing room for patients and staff opens at Swansea's cancer centre thanks to group's generosity

A group that has spent a quarter of a century supporting people with cancer will help continue the good work even though it is disbanding.

The Swansea and Gower Cancer Self Help Group was founded in 1999 by Yvonne Young after she received a cancer diagnosis.

It held weekly sessions in Swansea for people affected by cancer and also ran a very successful fundraising shop.

(Main photo above: Yvonne, second left, with group directors Helen Neal, Mel Storey, Carole Farah and Geoff Parr)

But, as with so much else in life, the legacy of Covid has left the group without a home and with dwindling numbers.

Before closing for good, though, group members have shared the money left in the group’s account with a number of worthy causes.

That included a £25,000 donation to develop a wellbeing room for use by patients and staff at the South West Wales Cancer Centre, or SWWCC.

The centre, now celebrating its 20^th anniversary year, is run by Swansea Bay University Health Board and provides a range of lifesaving NHS treatments such as radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy.

Facilities are being upgraded, with the Chemotherapy Day Unit (CDU) on Ward 9 being transformed thanks to charitable donations.

Plans are also being drawn up for a new outpatient suite in the old CDU at the back of Singleton.

Now work has also been completed on the wellbeing room – called the Lotus Suite – on Ward 10. It includes comfortable furniture, a meeting table, projector and screen, and a wall mural with images of lavender.

This, along with the spectacular view across Swansea Bay to Mumbles, helps create the impression of bringing the natural world indoors.

Yvonne, who visited along with the group’s directors, cut the ribbon to mark the Lotus Suite’s official opening.

“I have been in here while they were working on it but today is the first time I’ve seen it finished,” she said. “It’s lovely – beautiful. The mural breaks up the clinical side of rooms in hospitals.

“When you’re a cancer patient, that’s all you’ve got in your head – the cancer. How they’re going to treat it, how are you going to get through it. Coming in here, it has that softer feel to it. More welcoming. Yes, it is lovely. And the view. You can’t get away from that view.”

Yvonne, from Swansea, was diagnosed with cancer in the late 1990s and underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy at Singleton.

“But after that I was just left on my own,” she recalled. “There was nothing else out there to help me. I just thought, what can I do to keep myself well? So I looked and found the Hospice of the Valleys.”

This is a charity that provides palliative care for people in the Blaenau Gwent area with life-limiting conditions such as cancer or heart failure.

Yvonne said she could see how the therapies it offered were beneficial and thought the same was needed in Swansea. Encouraged by one of the hospice doctors and with support of a number of people and therapists she formed the Swansea and Gower Cancer Self Help Group.

“We managed to have a rental at the day centre in Norton Lodge in West Cross,” she said. “We held sessions there on a Saturday for anyone who’d had treatment, going through treatment and come out the other end.

“They didn’t have to have anything if they didn’t want to, if they just wanted to talk and have a cup of tea, they could.

“Most of our therapists have been with me for a long, long time. Without them, it couldn’t have kept going as long as it did.”

The group lost its West Cross base during the pandemic, and it has been unable to secure an alternative. Numbers have also dwindled, again as a direct result of Covid.

“People didn’t want to go out and mix,” said Yvonne. “Nobody wanted to take it on, and I thought it was time that we moved on, and the money could be better spent put into other charities.”

Apart from the SWWCC, the group has also donated to Ty Olwen at Morriston Hospital, the Cancer Information and Support Service in Uplands, Swansea, and Sandville Self-Help Foundation in Porthcawl.

(Kate Ashton, standing, in conversation with the group directors inside the new Lotus Suite)

Kate Ashton, Oncology Service Manager at the SWWCC, said the Lotus Suite would be used for both planned and unplanned activities, and would be available to patients and staff.

“It’s an area which isn’t clinical,” she said. “It takes away from that clinical atmosphere, to provide patients and staff with an area where they can have time out and decompress.

“It also provides somewhere to take families and patients if they have had upsetting news or for difficult conversations.

“It’s providing us with an area in which to offer services we previously haven’t had the environment to provide. We can now offer sessions and activities that focus on the wellbeing of patients and staff.”

A large waiting room in Ward 10 was divided into two, with one half still used as a waiting area and the other now the Lotus Suite.

The lotus theme is reflected in the window decal which also serves as a screen providing privacy. However, the most eye-catching feature is the lavender mural extending the entire length of one wall.

“We wanted an image that made you feel relaxed. We wanted something that didn’t feel too false but had a soft focus to it,” said Kate.

“When we were looking at choices, that was the one that was favoured amongst staff and patients we spoke to. It just felt relaxing and calming.

“The Swansea and Gower Cancer Self Help Group had purple in its logo, and we wanted to retain that, acknowledging the generous donation they gave us that enabled us to create this space.”

A fundraising appeal, Going the Extra Mile for Cancer, has been launched to mark the centre's 20th anniversary.

Follow this link if you want to support the Going the Extra Mile for Cancer appeal.

And follow this link to find out more about Going the Extra Mile for Cancer.