A South Holland family who spent hundreds of pounds on petrol taking their son for cancer treatment is backing calls for government help.
Jo and Gareth Devaney are supporting a campaign by charity CLIC Sargent after statistics revealed children with cancer travel twice as far and spend twice as much on transport than adults.
On average, the families of patients face a round trip of 60 miles for treatment, adding at least £180 a month to petrol bills.
The Gosberton Risegate family was making the 140-mile round trip to Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, when their young son was needing vital treatment.
Lucas was three years old when he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in March 2015.
The family had to make sure the petrol tank of their car was always full and at times their son had so many tests over a couple of days that Jo and Gareth paid around £80 a night for a hotel.
In November of 2015 Lucas was transferred to Peterborough hospital as he needed less intensive treatment. But the 60-mile round trip was still expensive.
“The whole cancer journey has been very costly. The first year was the hardest when we were going back and forth to Addenbrooke’s all the time which was a 140-mile round trip. Gareth was self-employed at the time so if we didn’t go to work we didn’t have the money. That meant that I stayed with Lucas by myself a lot of the time and it was a struggle to keep the family together and have any sense of normality.
“We drove every time, so petrol costs were a big problem for us. We always have to make sure we had a full tank of petrol because we were driving such a long way,” said Jo.
“We have cars on finance so a major worry was not having enough money to pay the bill each month.
“I don’t even want to think about how stressful it would have been if we hadn’t been able to keep up with payments,” she added.
CLIC Sargent is urging the government to set up a Young Cancer Patient Travel Fund to help families afford to get to hospital and back for vital treatment.
“Being told that your child has cancer is one of the most horrendous situations that any parent can imagine. No parent should ever have to worry about not having enough money to take their child to hospital for cancer treatment,” said Kate Lee, chief executive of the charity.
CLIC Sargent is asking the public to sign a petition to establish the fund and it can be found at the website: www.clicsargent.org.uk.ccam
