2024 Support services round up

We are really pleased that our Support services have continued to grow and meet the needs of the community over the last twelve months. Our Support & Engagement Manager, Claire, highlights the main achievements for 2024.

Having extra resource within the Support team (Liz joined us in January this year) meant that we have been able to see a lot of expansion within our support services this year. We're thrilled to have seen:
136 attend our 2nds Together wellbeing retreats in Crieff, Liverpool, Northern Ireland, Aylesbury and Whitstable
17 Tea & Chat groups established regionally in the UK
1.9K '2nds Together' private group members
750 Wellbeing group attendees across Pilates, Birdsong Yoga and Breathwork 

Our year in focus

Our first event of 2024 was our online 'Wellbeing Week' in February with the focus on Fatigue. We enjoyed a Qi Gong & Breathwork session run by Louisa Rasmussen of Breathe Balance Be and a movement session from Natalie at Fireflies Fitness, both designed to combat the feelings of fatigue that come with a secondary breast cancer diagnosis. Retired Advanced Breast Clinical Nurse Specialist Pauline who was based at the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre, hosted a Q&A session on the subject and we were thankful to everyone that sent in their questions.  

In May we had the first of our 2nds Together Retreats at Blairmore Farm, Crieff. The Retreats are fully-funded opportunities for people living with secondary breast cancer to relax, make important friendships and get peer-to-peer support. We had a wonderful time with 32 community members over two different sessions.

June saw us take 35 members to Rainhill, Liverpool for the next of our 2nds Together Retreats. We enjoyed Qi Gong, Mindfulness and polymer clay crafting and in July we had our first retreat in Northern Ireland, treating 22 members of the community to two nights of rest, relaxation and fun activities such as yoga, mindfulness and felting. 

We had the first of our day retreats in September at Abbotts View Alpaca Farm in Aylesbury with 24 people enjoying walks with the alpacas and needlework felt. This is the first time we have trialled a day retreat and had great feedback about the event.

The last of our Retreats took place in October in Whitstable with 23 attendees enjoying yoga, Autumnal hoop crafts and mocktail-making - with even some going in for a early morning swim! Our 2025 Retreats will be available to apply for in February 2025!

October was also busy with our Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day events with an afternoon tea at Tigerlilly, Edinburgh, and our annual joint event with Future Dreams charity, Secondary Sisters and InsuranceWith in London. We also helped to host an afternoon at Jennifer Young headquarters in Crewe. These events are really important as Breast Cancer Awareness Month can be incredibly emotional for the community so it gives a chance for people to come together and support each other.

Throughout the year, our Tea & Chat Live groups have continued to expand with new groups opening bringing our total to 17! We saw our first group open in Wales at the seaside town of Rhyl as well as groups open in Bath, Carlisle, Dumfries, Chelmsford & Suffolk. Our Belfast, Hereford, Glasgow, London & Boston/Lincoln groups celebrated their 2nd birthday and our Birmingham, Devon, Edinburgh, Manchester, St Helens and Inverness turned 1 this year! We have plans to start more groups next year in the Scottish Borders, Newport, Doncaster, Leeds and more! Thank you to all our Community Ambassadors for helping us make these groups possible. 

Our Wellbeing programme continues to also draw in more numbers and we were delighted to launch Pilates in October with community member, Janet. Our 'Breathwork' and 'Be Kind to your Mind' sessions with Louisa from Breathe Balance Be continue to be popular, as is our Birdsong Yoga Physio session with Yvonne.

We're looking forward to increasing our support services even more in 2025!