John Mitchell

Yeah, the young adult program is a relatively new program.

It's been going for a couple of years.

But I mean, we were traditionally set up to work with children with childhood cancer back in 1994.

And our program offering has evolved over the last 30 years into an awful lot more community based programs that we run, whether it's hospital outreach or school education programs.

But it was just coming out of the COVID pandemic when we started actually looking at that young adult age cohort.

So 18 to 24 years.

Because a diagnosis in around that time is a hugely disruptive thing.

It's hugely disruptive at any time of your life.

But, you know, at that age, it can have massive knock-on effects as well.

And even for children that get their diagnosis at an early age, there are now late-term or long-term effects that we're seeing coming out of that as well.

And so we felt it was important that we were able to

create a programme that meets some of those psychosocial needs that young people have as they're managing that transition out of illness as well.

Yeah, for sure.

And I think Kayla says it there so well that like you almost have to find your tribe again.

You know, you have to connect with people that have been on a similar journey and a similar illness journey to you.

I think Barrettstown gives you the platform and the place to be able to do stuff like that.

And there is, you know, there's so many supports out there for young adults now, but sometimes it's hard to navigate those and it's hard to figure out who can I turn to for help and who can I turn to for support.

I think that's why when we partnered with Holland and Barrett and we look at their expertise around, you know, food and sleep and well-being and emotional health, it's almost a perfect merger because we're bringing that psychosocial element to it as well.

It is.

Yeah, it is.