Fran Sullivan, Michelle Forsyth and Will Farrow
A Skin Cancer Care Co-ordinator is helping Blackpool’s most vulnerable youngsters stay safe in the sun.
Michelle Forsyth, who works for Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, has donated bags of sun cream and information to the town’s Streetlife centre during the recent spells of hot weather.
Michelle visited “The Base” on Buchanan Street, to drop off 30 bags with sun safe information in and samples of sun cream to hand out to the people attending the drop in sessions.
And as an Ambassador of the Karen Clifford Skin Cancer charity, Skcin, Michelle secured a donation of one of their special sun screen boards to help more of Streetlife’s service users.
She said: “Skcin were able to provide a sun cream dispenser and UV board with a litre of Debs Stokoderm factor 50, 5 star sun cream for the centre to use.”
Streetlife is an organisation which assists vulnerable young people in Blackpool, a lot of whom access the service as homeless.
One service user, Will Farrow, 20, said: “This is the best idea to help people in the situation they are in and an enormous help when it has been extremely sunny.”
Skcin Business Development Manager, Marie Tudor, said: “Much of our society is at risk of skin cancer without proper sun protection measures and access to sun cream.
“Those individuals that are disadvantaged and vulnerable are at particular risk without proper health education and access to sun cream.
“The recent hot weather has highlighted this and we are concerned to hear of the cases of hospital admissions due to heat stroke and sunburn. We hope the donation of sun cream from Skcin and our charity partner the Deb Group, offer a small gesture to help those individuals.”
Fran Sullivan, Streetlife Deputy CEO and Day Centre Co-Ordinator, said: “People experiencing homelessness can’t always get inside away from the sun and they have no funds for protection.
“In the last spell of hot weather, we had to take three of our service users to hospital to be treated for sunburn and heatstroke.
“We can now provide free sunscreen in a safe place with the correct protection. It’s amazing.”