WA Youth Cancer Service
The WA Youth Cancer Service (YCS) is a state-wide service sponsored by the North Metropolitan Health Service and is based in the You Can Centre within the WA Comprehensive Cancer Centre at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital.
The You Can Centre is the first of its kind in Australia and is specifically for young people aged 15 to 25 years old with cancer. The WA Youth Cancer Service offers age-appropriate psychosocial assessment and a multidisciplinary approach to developing a disease-specific medical treatment plan.
The You Can Centre has been designed with input from a youth advisory group to reflect the needs, technology, design and colours that embody young people’s preferences and attitudes allowing the social aspect of life to be maintained whilst undergoing treatment. Facilities include bright group and recreation spaces, counselling spaces, computers and other technology.
The WA YCS provides adolescents and young adult patients referred to the service with the following:
Care Coordination
Our Cancer Care Coordinators are registered nurses who are available to cancer patients and their families to provide support and assistance in coordinating treatment.
Exercise Physiology
Our senior Accredited Exercise Physiologist provides patients with specific exercise advice and rehabilitation to help minimise the impact of their cancer treatment. Exercises tailored to their needs help patients maintain or improve muscular strength, endurance and flexibility so that they can better tolerate treatment and maintain the physical strength to participate in normal everyday tasks.
Education Services
Our service aims to identify the specific educational and vocational needs for each patient and provide support during and after treatment. We can link patients into other services as needed to facilitate ongoing maintenance of educational and vocational goals and provide advocacy with the young person’s teaching institution or vocational training service.
Medical Services
We provide specialist medical advice and care for 15 to 25-year-olds with cancer. Our YCS clinician works closely with other cancer specialists to ensure that patients have access to medical expertise relevant to youth health and for their specific type of cancer.
Psychosocial Services
Psychosocial support may include engaging with a young person’s family, partner and friends to ensure a support network can be strengthened and maintained. We strive to empower young people to be involved in their own health care and decisions, whilst remaining as connected as possible to ‘normal’ life activities throughout their cancer journey.