Annual Report & Accounts 2010 CHILDREN with CANCER UK Registered Charity No. 298405. Formerly CHILDREN with LEUKAEMIA UK. Inaugurated in 1988 by Diana, Princess of Wales Review of the year Foreword by the Chairman As anticipated, 2010 was another challenging year economically. However, despite these challenges, we achieved a modest increase in income and succeeded in funding innovative and important projects in our fight against childhood leukaemia and other childhood cancers. Over the past 23 years, what started as a small memorial charity has become a major force in paediatric oncology helping to drive the survival rate for childhood leukaemia above 80 per cent. Building on this success, in 2011 we have ceased to promote our working name of CHILDREN with LEUKAEMIA and are known by our reporting name, CHILDREN with CANCER UK. We will continue to fund life-saving research into the causes, prevention and treatment of childhood leukaemia and other childhood cancers and will continue our work to protect young lives through essential welfare and campaigning programmes. We thank you for your interest in our work and hope that you will continue to work in partnership with us to achieve our aims. Eddie O’Gorman, OBE, Chairman of Trustees Since broadening our charitable objectives in 2007, we have funded some important projects relating to other types of childhood cancer. However, our primary focus has remained on leukaemia, the most common childhood cancer. Significant advances have been made in our understanding and treatment of childhood leukaemia but this progress has not necessarily been paralleled in other forms of childhood cancer. We hope that our increasing focus on other childhood cancers will stimulate new research and encourage more collaborative research work across the different types of childhood cancer. Ultimately, we hope that this will help many more children and save many more young lives. This time last year we set out our goals for 2010 and • £120,000 to support the establishment of the we now reflect on how we have performed against Children’s Cancer Trials Team at the University of each of them. Birmingham. This new unit will take over responsibility for running the UK’s childhood Research into childhood cancer clinical trials and developing new trials. As planned, in 2010 we continued to fund high (See page 27 for a full list of grants awarded). quality research into childhood leukaemia and other forms of cancer affecting children and young people. 2011 will be an exciting year for the Charity as we Significant grants this year included: make the full transition to CHILDREN with CANCER UK. • £330,000 to the UCL Cancer Institute to facilitate We will continue to fund innovative research into Professor Tariq Enver’s move from Oxford and childhood cancers in an effort to improve enable expansion of his world-leading research understanding and advance treatments. on leukaemic stem cells (see page 8); We have already launched our 2011 grant round, our • £168,039 to the Childhood Cancer Research biggest ever, with £2 million available for research Group in Oxford (Dr Michael Murphy and Dr Gerald into the causes of childhood cancers. In addition, we Draper) for studies on retinoblastoma, a cancer of hope to fund a number of new initiatives directly the eye which mainly affects the under fives; and focused on the treatment of childhood cancers. 2 Review of the year We also plan to expand and strengthen our panel of However, the reasons for this association are not scientific advisors to reflect our increasing focus on well-understood. Whilst research continues, we other childhood cancers and to work with these believe that the ‘precautionary principle’ should be advisors to develop our research strategy applied to the development of homes and schools in accordingly. At the same time, we will take forward proximity to power lines and vice versa. plans for our 2012 conference on ‘early exposures’ and childhood cancer. 2010 was a busy year for campaigning with the general election in May and subsequently a large Care of children with cancer number of new MPs to meet and brief. In 2010, we continued our partnership with CLIC During the year we have worked to broaden our Sargent, making a further grant of £200,000 for supporter base in Parliament and, through working Paul’s Fund, through which they provide much with MPs and Peers, we have raised issues of needed financial assistance to the families of relevance during the passage of the Government’s children being treated for cancer. We do not have health and local government reforms. the infrastructure to provide this kind of assistance directly to families so our partnership with CLIC In 2011, we will be lobbying Government on the new Sargent is very important. Bills announced following the election – in particular the Localism Bill. We want to ensure that communities We provided further funding of £750,000 to Paul have a greater say over the location of new power O’Gorman Lifeline to support their valuable work for lines in relation to their homes and schools. children with cancer from Eastern Europe. We will also continue to engage with a range of We are pleased to report that we continued our stakeholders to explore how public health issues support of Christopher’s Hospice in Surrey with a can be taken into consideration in planning grant of £60,000 to CHASE Hospice Care (now applications for our communities. Shooting Star CHASE); we provided funding of £20,000 to Keech Hospice Care in Luton to support Fundraising their work with children and young people with cancer; and we awarded funding of £48,000 to Despite the continuing challenges of the economic Lifelites, an organisation that provides IT and climate, we are pleased to report a modest increase entertainment equipment for children’s hospices. in income in 2010, taking our total income to just over £11 million. This is the result of small income We were also pleased to work with Marie Curie increases across most areas of activity. Cancer Care on a project at Great Ormond Street Hospital, dedicated to improving care for terminally In 2011, we will continue to build on our existing ill children. We provided funding of £85,733 to successful activities and streamline our costs to support this new initiative. maximise the amount of money available to support our charitable work. (See page 27 for a full list of grants awarded). Financial review In 2011, as part of the ongoing review of our work, we have made the difficult decision not to continue In the year to 31st December 2010, we made a surplus our annual children’s party, through which we have of £3,382,244 (2009: £1,116,186) and our net asset entertained many thousands of sick and position has risen from £4,506,938 to £7,889,182. disadvantaged children since 1988. Grant expenditure was low in 2010 and, together Over the coming months, we will be carrying out a with the better than expected fundraising income, review of our welfare activities to determine how this resulted in the large surplus for the year. best to direct our efforts in the years ahead. Our net assets exceed the requirements of our Raising awareness reserves policy facilitating our expanded focus from leukaemia to all forms of childhood cancer. We campaign to raise awareness of issues affecting children with cancer. Grant-making activity will be increased in 2011. We have already launched a major grant round for Much of our campaigning activity relates to the link research into the causes of childhood cancers between overhead power lines and the risk of through which we expect to grant at least £2 million. childhood leukaemia. Research has shown that A number of other grants and initiatives are currently children who live in proximity to high voltage in development. overhead power lines have an increased risk of developing leukaemia. (See page 21 for full financial information). www.childrenwithcancer.org.uk 3 About childhood cancer Around 1,500 children are diagnosed with cancer every year in the UK. There are more than 50 Main types of childhood cancer different types of cancer affecting children, divided Children aged 0 - 14 years into 12 main groups. Great Britain 2001 to 2005 Leukaemia is the most common type of cancer to affect children, followed by brain and spinal tumours (or central nervous system CNS tumours). Together, leukaemia and CNS tumours account for more than half of all cancers diagnosed in children. Important progress has been made in the treatment of childhood cancer over the past few decades. In the late 1960s, almost three quarters of children diagnosed with cancer died. Today, more than three quarters of children diagnosed with cancer survive1. “It’s an enormous challenge but we have considerable support and are confident that we can make a real difference to the lives of children with cancer.” Improving the outlook for children with cancer Although there is a high overall survival rate for damage caused by treatments. Existing treatments children with cancer, there is a wide variation can cause long-lasting damage to children’s health between different types of childhood cancer. and development – including a risk of second Survival rates for the 12 main groups vary between cancers, heart problems, cognitive impairment and 99 per cent for retinoblastoma and 61 per cent for infertility. These problems are not unique to those bone tumours2. with certain types of cancer, but common across all children being treated for cancer. Within these groups, the survival rates for the sub-types vary even more. One rare type of We want to harness existing knowledge to benefit all embryonal tumour has no long-term survivors1.