THE past 18 months have been a whirl wind for Kevin Robinson, the founder of the non-for-profit, 24/7 on-call Little Wings patient flight service and this year’s winner of the NSW Australian of the Year Local Hero Award and the NSW Volunteer Award for Western Sydney.
The Little Wings flight service has grown from a budgeted 30 flights a year to delivering 225 flights which help 530 people, with potential to assist 900 people if Kevin can secure increased funding for the coming year.
The experienced pilot has operated a management consultancy business for the past 15 years, and used to donate a percentage of his profits to charities.
However, disenchantment with the fact much of the money he donated was caught up and lost through administration rather than directly helping people in need he decided to do something.
“I approached the children’s hospital at Westmead and got talking to them about doing something more directly,” he said.
“They started to talk to me about children with cancer in regional NSW and the process they go through, what happens, and how there is a lot of trauma associated with long distance travel and the effect this has on families.
“About 40 per cent of family’s break up during the treatment cycle due to the pressure and for paediatric renal about 70pc of family’s break up.
“I saw a gap with what flights were available and what’s really needed - being a pilot I just saw a fit.”
Kevin said hospital determined who needed the care.
The original plan was to fund flights for one to two days a week - Kevin felt a Friday and Saturday flight service - however it was so successful it soon went from Friday and Saturday to Sunday, and then full time.
Kevin said families needed flights seven days - “you can’t do it when its convenient to you”.
“Originally we planned to do 30 to 40 flights a year but in the first year we did 165 flights for more than 300 people, then last year it was more than 225 flights for 570 people, and this year has been about 400 flights helping about 900 people,“ he said.
The Little wings free service for patients is fully paid for through donations, and is operated by volunteer staff from administration and drivers to pilots.
Kevin new the service would need a comfortable, air conditioned aircraft, and a perfect fit for that was a Piper Malibu.
After lot of phone work he found Automation Group in Dubbo which happened to have a plane and was keen to become involved with the service, supplying the plane and pilot from day one.
“For them to get behind us and support what we are doing is the reason we have succeeded so quickly - we couldn’t have got to this point as quickly as we have otherwise,” Kevin said.
Automation Group’s Adrian Nisbet manages all the Little Wings flight operations as a full-time volunteer.
This allows Kevin to work on the business side of the service while Mr Nisbet manages the aircraft, the pilots’ the training, and what needs to be done to deliver the flights.
Kevin said the drivers were an important part of the service.
“There’s no point in landing at Bankstown Airport if you can’t get somebody there to meet us on arrival at the airport,” he said.
“The flying is the glamorous part of it, but then you have the transport through Sydney traffic side of it too - that removes the need for the family to worry about it.
“You talk to kids about taking an hour-long plane trip compared to five hours in the car and they get all excited and happy.
“It’s great to see the kids arrive fresh and happy and mum or dad not stressed out from a long drive - it helps to remove some of the worry out of the situation because they’ve got enough to deal with already.”
Once the Little Wings’ team picked up a patent they looked after them all the whole way through and all pilots had first aid training to do it safety.
“We don’t need a doctor or a nurse - its really like a taxi service,” Kevin said.
Little Wings operates using a core group of three to four pilots, and has a strict and demanding criteria for recruiting.
Kevin said he looked for the top end of the general aviation and commercial pilots with a particular skill set.
“We have to find the right people who not only can fly the plane and do the flights but have to be emotionally geared to handle what were doing - there’s a big customer service role in this as well you bringing a family on board that’s going through a tough time you can’t be insensitive,” he said.
“It’s all well and good being able to fly the plane, but having the right people skills is also really important.”
While Kevin has personally donated $350,000 towards the service, finding a sponsor to back something which hadn’t been done before was almost impossible, and Kevin said Little Wings had been lucky with the support of Clubs NSW.
“We also have a lot of organisations come on board that help organise fundraisers - it goes to show the heart of people,” he said.
“One of the incredible things about doing this is meeting people who will just do anything to help others.
“These people are just the fabric of life - they’re amazing.”
The goal in the next three to five years is to increase the service to about 1000 flight services a year which will be able to help about 4500 people.
Kevin hopes to eventually expand the service into Queensland and Victoria, and eventually go Australia wide.
“Flying is what I want to do, but fundraising is what I need to do because with out the fundraising we won’t have the flying,” he said.
“At present we service Westmead, Randwick, Bear Cottage in Manly and just signed on for John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle.
“John Hunter is really the big player in providing regional heath care in NSW, so our primary aim is to keep families together and help them get the treatment they need then get them back home safely.”
