Dear friend of the Foundation,

The Children's Cancer Foundation applauds the Federal Government's $10.8 million investment in childhood cancer, as announced in the 2017 Budget.

We have long been advocating for a dedicated funding stream for childhood cancer, with adult cancers receiving to date a disproportionate share of research funding, and so we celebrate tonight's announcement.

The $10.8m investment will be directed to funding clinical research and trials. We know this is where the breakthroughs are to be made in finding less harmful treatments and better outcomes for the hundreds of Australian children diagnosed with cancer each year.

Where the funding is going:

• $4.4m provided for research aimed at increasing Australia's capacity to advance clinical trials and clinical research, diagnosis and treatment of childhood cancer;
• $1.4m provided to fast track international research collaborations in childhood brain cancer in Australia; and
• $5m provided under the Medical Research Future Fund in its first year to improve outcomes for children and young people undergoing treatment for cancer.

Australia's first proton beam therapy centre will be built in Adelaide at a cost of $68m, benefitting children with brain cancer and other tumours located close to vital organs due to the greater precision of the radiotherapy. Further proton beam therapy centres are planned in other states.

We encourage Federal and State governments to leverage their large funding streams against charity contributions to accelerate the pace of change and ensure sustainable funding of clinical research and clinical trials.

In 2002, our $23m capital fund benefitted from leveraging government dollars – $10m of Federal funding was matched by $7m in Victorian funding and $5m from community fundraising by the Foundation – to construct a new cancer ward and integrated research facilities at The Royal Children’s Hospital.

We are hopeful that this scale of collaborative funding can be again achieved with the resources of the Medical Research Future Fund, which will distribute up to $1.6 billion over the next 5 years.

We look forward to sharing with you our own major funding announcements in the coming weeks.

Kind regards,

Aileen Boyd-Squires
Chief Executive