'You've saved our lives': 100 years of caring for kids

After a childhood marked by family violence, exposure to drug abuse and a school expulsion, a little boy received his first invitation to a birthday party. The 10-year-old, one of four siblings living with their mother in far west NSW, had found his first best friend. Despite their challenges, the family made the seven-hour trip to Manly, a beachside suburb in Sydney, to seek help at health service Royal Far West. The charity's clinicians treated the child's behavioural issues, care he would have waited years to access in his rural home town. Chief executive Jacqui Emery met the family in her first week in the job in 2021 and they became her beacon as she led the mission to care for one child at a time. "The mother said, 'You've saved our lives, you've saved his life," Ms Emery told AAP. "That's what we mean by one child at a time." The national charity, which connects rural and remote children with a variety of healthcare, will mark its centenary in December. Cobar-based reverend and carpenter Stanley Drummond founded the service in 1924, inspired by time he spent recovering from surgery at Manly Beach. It has always aimed to "go where the system stops", using developing technology to ensure no child or community is out of reach. Aviation pioneer Nancy Bird Walton flew nurses to remote outstations in her Gipsy Moth from 1935, while Sir Charles Kingsford Smith was a major donor. In its early days, the charity hosted seaside camps for children from outback NSW. When a group arrived in Manly on a rainy December day in 1948, a girl from Menindee was asked whether she brought the weather with her. "Her slightly sardonic reply was, 'There's no rain up there to bring'," The Sydney Morning Herald reported. An eight-year-old shearer's son successfully treated for a stutter in the 1950s was chosen to deliver Australia's message to the Queen in a BBC round-the-world Christmas broadcast. "I came down because I could hardly talk properly," the boy's message said. "Mummy, listen! I'm coming home. I can talk beaut now." Two decades later Queen Elizabeth II visited the organisation, granting its Royal title. The international recognition and ongoing backing from high-profile Australians is down to the charity's links to the heart of the country, Ms Emery said. "It's such an Australian story," she said. "It is about the outback and children that are more needy than others - that's always captured people." From the adoption of advances like splints to treat childhood hip disorders, swivel walkers and aeromedical services, Royal Far West was also an early user of telehealth in 2013. Video and telephone calls allowed city clinicians to stay in touch with rural patients, deliver programs to far-flung schools and expand into states outside NSW. The uptake of telehealth was due to greater understanding of developmental disorders, with country-born children twice as likely to be affected. "That leaves a bit of a legacy: it's been able to help much more broadly than just a one-to-one with a child." The charity is now working in a rapidly-changing world, as global warming dramatically fractures childhoods. Disaster recovery programs, like one rolled out to bolster the wellbeing of 3000 children after the Black Summer bushfires, will become even more significant in years to come. "We need to put the focus, the funding and the policies around these things right now," Ms Emery said. "It's really important to remember that children are often the silent victims."