Lets get to one million! – Medical Cannabis access on the NHS
In 2020 I co-founded MedCan Support www.medcansupport.co.uk with my friends Matt Hughes who has a son, Charlie with epilepsy and also Dr Callie Seaman who is a plant scientist and also has epilepsy. Through our shared experiences of using prescribed cannabis for our children and the challenges we faced, and knowledge we built, we felt there was a huge gap in supporting families. Medcan support is a non-profit organisation and a central hub for education, research, advocacy and support to the many families who are struggling with chronically unwell children who wish to pursue using medical cannabis with their child. We all felt very alone when we were researching the use of medical cannabis and we don’t want anyone to suffer as we have in the past.
Although our aim is population wide NHS access for prescribed cannabis to all children suffering severe epilepsy, we wanted to help in other ways also. Before Alfie was well, I was so afraid and worried for his future and struggling to cope, I reached a point I felt I couldn’t go on anymore. There are so many families going through what I did. It’s sadly all too common to see parents and siblings suffering anxiety, depression and PTSD. With little to no respite and no support from NHS and families left to cope we want to raise funds to support families with receiving mental health support, respite, holidays and any specialist equipment needed.
We are hugely grateful that Melanie Sykes has recently agreed to become our Ambassador and help us raise awareness of medical cannabis access issues in the UK will also help support us with above in raising funds for our families.
We are also calling for more signatures for my petition. Lets get it to 1 million signers, then I can present it to the Prime Minister and ask him to urgently intervene in this policy failure that we see around medical cannabis access.
Please watch our film and share the link to our funding page https://justgiving.com/crowdfunding/medcansupport and the petition both here to help us make sure that access is available on the NHS.
Best wishes
Hannah, Matt, Callie and Melanie xx