Insurance summit partner broadens cancer support programme

“We want to be able to support [both the] patient and carer. We focus on the patient, which is really important because it is an emotional and a harrowing time for them because of the impact of the treatment; equally, for the carers to be able to handle those stressful moments, if we can give practical tools, that really is helpful.”

LGFB, which is the coffee sponsor of the upcoming Women in Insurance Summit in Auckland, provides free classes to cancer patients spanning topics like makeup, wigs, scarf tying, body image, and nail care – all with the aim of teaching them beauty techniques to help manage treatment side effects that relate to appearance and offer some normalcy.

Now, those who look after the patients, such as close family members, will also get to access a set of classes designed to support them in their role as carers.

“We’re embarking on carer-specific support this year,” O’Higgins told Insurance Business. “We’ve trialled some late last year, but we’re going to increasingly look to ask the carers in terms of what they need and how they might be best practically supported, and work with other organisations as well. We’re working with Clearhead, which is an organisation that gives tools to corporates.

“I think it’s just a really important time for people as they’ve come out of lockdown from COVID. COVID is still here, cancer still impacts – there’s a lot that people are carrying. So, we see ourselves as empowering anyone affected by cancer and we’ve definitely shifted our mandate.”

She went on to stress: “But the patient we’re dealing with today, and that’s really important. Someone today can look for a class tomorrow – whether it’s an online class, whether it’s a recorded on demand, whether it’s a class in the community, you can access us in whatever form you feel most comfortable doing so.”

Team behind LGFB

For 2023, LGFB has more than 320 classes lined up, of which the face-to-face ones are held in 41 centres across New Zealand. The charity’s general manager is supported by four other members of a core team running the programme, 50 volunteer facilitators delivering the programme, and nearly 200 volunteers performing various tasks in and around the country.

O’Higgins, who sees insurers and brokers as a bridge that can connect LGFB to cancer patients and their families, told Insurance Business: “We are so lucky with those who are actually delivering the programme for us – they not only offer that practical advice, but they really enjoy being able to connect and they just get that real sense of ‘Today is a good day’.

‘Today is the day that I’ve seen someone come in the room, they are nervous, they are unsure, they perhaps don’t recognise themselves in the mirror, and by the time they leave they’ve got practical tools, they know they can replicate this, they know how to draw their eyebrows or they know how to camouflage perhaps any redness or anything like that’. And the women go out feeling empowered.

“So, the facilitator volunteers feel that it’s a real way in which Kiwis are helping Kiwis, and I think that’s the beautiful thing – is that every time I visit a class, it’s a true honour to see just the connection between the volunteer and the participant, raising someone up to feel the best that they can feel. And if it means that they can face something tomorrow with more confidence because they’ve got some tools to feel a little more normal when nothing’s normal, that gives all of our people a real sense of achievement.”

Those who wish to volunteer and help LGFB in supporting cancer patients and their carers can apply here.