In 2012, Macmillan Cancer Support partnered with 15 NHS health providers in the UK to fund new ways of delivering supportive care to cancer patients in the community. The project grew out of the work commissioned by the National Cancer Survivorship Initiative to find pathways for supporting people with active or advanced disease. In Southampton, a community-based complex case manager was established to test the assumption that the role could improve health outcomes in a group of patients with specific needs. Those with advanced breast or gynaecological disease were case-managed with the aim of improving self-management and wellbeing. The learning from the pilot can be used to inform the argument for building specialist teams in the community, targeted at people under the age of 75, who are living with cancer as a complex chronic disease.