About > Chad Hancock Cancer Foundation for Young Adults Inc.
The Chad Hancock Cancer Foundation for Young Adults was established in 2005, in memory of Chad Hancock. Chad was a young adult who battled with cancer for 4 years before passing away on the 29th of June 2004 at the age of 22.
During Chad’s journey it became clear that whilst there was support to help some groups through their own unique experience, it became evident that there was little, if any specific or relevant support to help young adults through their cancer journey.
There are many services provided for people with breast cancer or prostate cancer and for children who are unfortunate enough to become ill. However, young adults who are faced with some of the most daunting life decision such as puberty, leaving home, finding a career, starting a family and even finding their own identity have no support network to turn to when faced with life changing decisions. Physical and psychological support is an essential part of treatment and recovery from any chronic disease and the youth of our society should not be deprived of such support.
The mission of the Chad Hancock Cancer Foundation is to provide funding to assist in the development of support services and programs for young adults. We wish to continue to work with and support other charities who are working with our core age group (18 to 28) and by providing funds to various charities it is hoped that support can be provided to many young adults who are faced with not only life changing decisions but also life threatening decisions concerning their treatment and health.
Within the past 9 years, we have raised in excess of $445,000. This year we will be running a number of fundraising events, with our major fundraising function being the 9th Annual Race Day lunch on 21st February, 2015 at Morphettville Racecourse. In 2014, 210 guests attended Race Day and raised in excess of $32,000 on the day to support young adults. We are looking forward to a bigger and better Race Day in 2015!
All of our committee and supporters are voluntary and all funds raised go directly to the charity.
We welcome any support you can provide and any donations will go directly to help young adults with cancer.
Canteen has run numerous “Over 18 Revolving Recreation Days”, Camps and other casual get-togethers with a focus on fun and education for young adults suffering cancer and their support people. A camp “Hobart Adventure” was run in August 2013 with 34 participants and 3 other Recreation days were held in 2013. We have provided funding of $55,000 over the years and wish to continue to fund and support these events in 2014 and beyond.
We have commenced a fund within the Womens' & Childrens' Hospital Foundation called the Chad Hancock Cancer Foundation Young Adult Support Fund to help cover everyday expenses for young adults going through cancer treatment. This fund covers expenses such as telephone bills, dental bills, electricity bills, rent and even food vouchers.
This is a unique fund in Australia and provides very direct and essential financial support when young adults with cancer need it most. The fund has provided in excess of $110,000 to pay for these expenses and support over the last 6 years.
We support a counselling program run by the Cancer Care Centre at Unley which provides free counselling for young adults and their family by a trained psychologist to help work through some of the issues of suffering from cancer.
We support an exercise and recovery program for young cancer patients through the Hampstead Centre and the Royal Adelaide Hospital. We are pleased to say that this program has now been accepted as part of the SA/NT Youth Cancer Service provided by SA Health and we were able to fund the out of pocket session costs for up to 20 participants in 2013.
In conjunction with Canteen and the Federal Government we have helped complete 2 recovery and treatment rooms specifically for AYA’s located at the RAH. We have provided furniture including comfortable recliner chairs, TV’s, DVD players, game consoles and a swag of other electronic equipment. These will hopefully provide a better environment for young people to receive treatment and help with their recovery.
When we first started our foundation there was little or no services for this group. However, in the last 9 years since the commencement of the charity we have seen the appointment of a Cancer Care Coordinator for Adolescents & Young Adults with the Health department and this service has been expanded and rebranded the SA/NT Youth Cancer Service.
This service has now appointed a full time Program Manager, a full time dedicated Oncologist, a Medical Fellow, a Psychologist, 2 Social Workers, a Clinical Nurse and a Exercise Physiologist all to build the support for young people further. We will continue to work closely with them to raise awareness of the need for further support.