Meg Hayes, Project Manager for the Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance

Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance has a proud record of supporting our colleagues to achieve their career goals – giving them the help they need to fulfil their potential, no matter what their starting point.

Meg Hayes is a highly valued member of the Cancer Alliance team who joined as an admin support officer shortly after the organisation was launched.

After just a few years, she has progressed to a Project Manager position in the Personalised Care and Prevention, Early Detection team, responsible for delivering new ways of working across Cheshire and Merseyside. Ultimately, her work helps to improve the experience that patients and their loved ones encounter in the NHS during and after treatment.

“I am so happy that I joined the Cancer Alliance,” said Meg. “Everybody has been so supportive and encouraging and has given me the confidence to push myself to apply for the role I am doing now.

“I did not think I would have the skills to get this job without going to university but it turns out that my experience of nearly 15 years working within cancer and developing trusted relationships – and all the hard work and constantly striving to be better – got me the job.”

When Meg arrived at the Cancer Alliance in May 2018, she joined in a Band 4 support role but rose three NHS pay levels to be a manager in just four years.

It was not what she had planned for. “I started at the Cancer Alliance after being made redundant from Wirral Hospice St John’s where I had worked for 10 years, with no plans on ever leaving, really,” she said.

“But when I arrived at the Cancer Alliance I had the opportunity to support lots of teams across the organisation and attend meetings throughout the region. This gave me such a good understanding of the work going on across all of our programmes and what the Cancer Alliance’s objectives are. I was also able to build relationships face-to-face with numerous clinicians across the region.

“Over the next few years I worked up the banding structure with roles that gave me more responsibility, which increased my self-confidence. My line managers really believed in me and gave me the confidence to believe in the experience and knowledge I had built up at the Cancer Alliance.

“I am so grateful for the support and belief all my line managers had in me, especially when I didn’t have that within myself.

“Now, I am a project manager working in a programme I am confident in. I strive to make a difference for patients following their cancer treatment to ensure they feel empowered and protected and taken care of, to ensure they have the best quality of life long after their cancer treatment.”

Meg, who is a mum of two children, Pippa (10) and Ben (8), is able to fit her parenting duties in with her work, as it can done mainly from home.

“I would really recommend the Cancer Alliance as a place to work,” said Meg. “What we do is so rewarding and impactful, and you will be well supported in whatever direction you want to go in.”