Background
Counterpart, a community-based organisation, has been connecting, supporting and informing women with breast or a gynaecological cancer since 2003.Peer support forms the core of Counterpart’s services; provided by highly trained and skilled volunteers who have their own experience of cancer. Peer Support Volunteers provide practical and emotional support and a listening ear. They do not provide medical, legal or financial advice or counselling.
The conversations
Counterpart has contact with women from diagnosis, through treatment and beyond. Contact may be one conversation, but many women engage in on-going conversations over months and sometimes longer, depending on their needs. In 2017, Counterpart introduced a system to record the themes of peer support conversations. The choice of themes and topics is based on the experiences of volunteers and staff engaging in over 30,000 interactions with women over 15 years.
For the period July 2017 to June 2018, over 1500 peer support conversations with women with cancer have been recorded. The themes of these conversations range across thirty topics including: living with metastatic cancer, after surgery, isolation, financial or legal difficulties, life after cancer, waiting for results, managing side effects and fear of recurrence. Initial analysis of these conversations suggests that regardless of cancer type, the most frequently occurring themes include: general check-in, coping with treatment and side effects, both short and long term, emotional support and family relationships.
The outcomes
Counterpart is now able to capture and analyse this data to gain a better understanding of the issues and needs of women following a cancer diagnosis and how they use peer support. This provides valuable evidence to support further development of Counterpart, including peer support training and to identify gaps in support and resources for women with cancer more generally.