2026: Starting as we mean to go on

To support people living with cancer right now, we’ve been busy growing our community of Macmillan professionals, so that more people get expert and truly person-centred care. There are now almost 12,000 professionals out there proudly wearing the Macmillan badge and taking advantage of our specialist training and support offers, and I am delighted that we have welcomed nearly 2,000 new professionals since we launched our new strategy.

This growth in the number of professionals is in part why we have now crossed the half a million line for the number of care plans completed via Macmillan’s electronic Holistic Needs Assessments (eHNA) platform. That means we have supported over 420,000 people with cancer to have a dedicated conversation about their physical, emotional and practical needs, so they can have a care plan which is right for them and their unique set of needs ^[ii].

Ideally every person with cancer would have one and we have a way to go to get to that day, but we are heading in the right direction.

Our partnerships on the ground are becoming more powerful too, as we get bolder about true collaboration. The response to our community CARE (Culture, Agency, Respect and Equity) grants programme has been extraordinary - we received 223 applications with an incredibly high standard and ambition, and we will award £5.5 million to some amazing projects that are tackling unwarranted variation in care across the UK.

I’ve also really enjoyed seeing our relationships with corporate partners deepen, looking at how we can collaborate better to have more impact. Organisations like Boots, Greene King, Scottish Widows and the National Garden Scheme are working with us not only to raise funds, but to drive meaningful change. With Boots, more opticians are trained to spot cancer signs and support patients. Our work with Scottish Widows projects a 58% rise in UK cancer prevalence by 2045 ^[iii], underscoring the need to scale support, while our collaboration with Greene King’s Early Bell campaign is opening up vital conversations about prostate cancer in local communities.

The pace of change is creating pressure internally in places. As more opportunities emerge and more work moves forward at speed, some of our teams are feeling the strain. And sometimes we haven’t got everything right for partners. It is easy to talk about being a learning organisation, but it is impossible to do it without the trusted partners who tell you honestly when things aren’t working, and I am grateful to the people who have done just that. Also to the colleagues who have trusted that it’s OK (more than) to be honest about when things aren’t going right, and asking for help. It’s how we get better next time

Balancing ambition, a desire for pace, with limited capacity isn’t easy and it requires constant attention to how we prioritise, support each other and work sustainably. Spaces like Macmillan Live, our all colleague get together in Birmingham in January, showed in full colour the value of us coming together, sharing openly and challenging ourselves to ensure we’re focusing on the things that matter most.