Environment critical to teenagers’recovery

The TCT’s CEO Simon Davies began by explaining to a large audience gathered at the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea for the study’s official launch that the first Teenage Cancer Trust (TCT) unit had been established in 1990, “quite by chance”, after a group of women gathered to organise a fashion show to fund a children’s intensive care heart unit at London’s Guy’s Hospital were so moved by an oncologist’s subsequent presentation on the plight of young cancer patients that they determined to raise the funds to establish the specialist teenage cancer facility at the capital’s Middlesex Hospital. Thanks to a combination of concerted, often high profile fund-raising initiatives, and support from public and private sector organisations, there are now 13 TCT units UK-wide, with six more scheduled to open during the next year. Unveiling the “Exploring the Impact of the Built Environment” study, which was undertaken on the TCT’s behalf by strategic insight and global trends research consultancy The Futures Company to identify the degree to which a high quality built environment affects young teenage cancer patients’ mental and physical state, Simon Davies explained that the research had been commissioned as the TCT celebrated almost 20 years of its units “to evaluate what we have already achieved, whether we are doing things right, and how we might improve our units in the future”. To fully explore these issues, the research consultancy undertook desk research, and interviewed both architects and designer representatives, and patients, their friends and families, to “gain a complete picture of the needs of different groups at various stages of their cancer”.

‘Snapshot’ of the full report

Simon Davies said: “The study’s findings – we are only highlighting a snapshot tonight, and will be publishing a full report in the next few months – demonstrate conclusively that the built environment is one of the key components through which Teenage Cancer Trust can deliver its philosophy. A good treatment environment works hand-in-hand with other key components, including the staff, equipment, and culture of each of our units, to support the delivery of five key ‘benefit platforms’, clearly identified in the research, which, combined, deliver the “normality” those undergoing therapy require.” These were: r Control – the capacity for patients to take control of important aspects of their daily lives, an especially important element give that, “just as these teenage patients are starting to gain greater control, the diagnosis of cancer takes much of the control away”. TCT units seek to provide this “control” by, for example, giving patients “ownership” of their own immediate environment, via, for instance, the ability to use “mood lighting” around their bed space, and to have privacy whenever they require it.