Probus hears from Little Wings

OVER 80 members of the Hawks Nest & District Probus Club gathered for a speech by Clare Pearson, CEO of Little Wings, a not-for-profit air transport service for sick children in remote regions, on Friday 5 June. 

Little Wings was established in 2012, after a retired pilot spoke with an oncology nurse at a major Sydney children’s hospital, and learnt about the plight of kids needing cancer treatments in remote regional areas, the reality of treatment waiting times, and the fact that many treatments just are not available out there.

Ms Pearson, who hailed from Forster originally, is also a qualified psychologist, specialising in child and adolescent welfare, fields that have proven very relevant to the work Little Wings does, and the true stories of those kids the service has helped.

“Little Heath, a boy just starting to walk, had an accident involving boiling water that had fused his fingers together,” Clare explained.

“His mother ended up driving him six hours to the nearest treatment centre, but subsequent appointments were helped by Little Wings.”

Clare said that the number of missions has increased dramatically since she took her position, and that has been mainly due to much greater awareness of the existence of Little Wings’ service.

“Little Wings service is provided at the behest of the Children’s Hospitals in NSW, with whom Little Wings has formal agreements, and the children must be referred to Little Wings by hospital staff with consideration to the child’s medical condition, geographical location and regularity of travel, with a minimum of three hours from primary treatment hospital.”

“Little Wings has agreements with Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick, Westmead, Royal Far West in Manly, John Hunter Children’s Hospital in Newcastle, and Queensland Children’s Hospital.”

“Today, we proudly support children experiencing serious illness across all domains, from the physical to the psychological. Ultimately, working to ensure that we support in meaningful ways, appreciating the complex impact serious and chronic illness have on children and their families.”

The service provides air transport for sick children, and some have been flying with Little Wings for over a decade.

“Some of the remote airports are just dirt strips and tin sheds, but we land where we can to get them the help they need,” Clare added.

“Each year we do the equivalent of 40 laps of the Earth, just around NSW and Queensland, and flew 2471 missions in 2024 alone.”

Little Wings is not an emergency service, a major difference between it and the likes of the Royal Flying Doctors Service.

With five aircraft owned outright, including donated ones, they are also able to use bigger craft to take multi-disciplinary teams to remote regions to help reduce waiting lists for treatments out there.

The number of missions per week has grown from a dozen in 2019 to up to 70 today, and during the COVID pandemic they were also helping kids with cancer receive critical treatments by delivering chemotherapy and other treatments with specialists to those left stranded by the lockdowns.

Recent fuel price spikes have made their primary fuel, aviation gasoline, skyrocket to $12,000 per week, forcing the number of missions to be reduced, and support from State and Federal governments has not been particularly forthcoming, with latest calls to the Fuel Task Force going unanswered.

“We would ask that people write to the NSW Health Minister about cutting relevant funding by 65%,” Clare added.

By Thomas O’KEEFE