Teenage Cancer Trust is the only UK charity providing specialised nursing care and support for young people with cancer. They’re here for anyone diagnosed with cancer aged 13-24, and their loved ones too.
The charity exists because cancer care wasn’t made for young people. Without the charity, a young person diagnosed with cancer today would find themselves lumped together with small children or much older adults.
You only get one chance at being young, and those years shape the person they become. Friendships, mental health, body image, studies, work, relationships and choices about the future are hard enough to navigate – before a cancer diagnosis shatters everything.
Teenage Cancer Trust provides the sensitive, individual care and support young people need at the toughest and scariest time they’ve ever faced – so they can get through cancer, rebuild their life and shape their own future.
In Scotland, Teenage Cancer Trust have specialist units at the Royal Hospital for Children and The Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre in Glasgow, and at the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People and Western General Hospital in Edinburgh.
The charity also funds a national Lead Nurse for Scotland in partnership with the Managed Service Network for Children and Young People with Cancer.
And Teenage Cancer Trust works in the Scottish Parliament, and as part of the Scottish Cancer Coalition, to ensure cancer remains a policy priority for the Scottish Government and that the needs of young people with cancer are represented.