Lucy Air Ambulance For Children

Charity of the Month

About Lucy Air Ambulance For Children

Lucy Air Ambulance for Children (Lucy AAC) is a national charity that ensures babies and critically ill children can access specialist treatment and care, wherever they are in the UK. Often the only way these children can access this care is to travel between hospitals by aeroplane and we are the only air ambulance charity that provides this unique service. Our transfers provide lifechanging outcomes for the children we fly, including: children being discharged from long hospital stays, overcoming diseases like cancer, and receiving a diagnosis which enables families to gain new support from organisations that are disease/disability specific.

Lucy Air Ambulance For Children's Challenges

At Lucy Air Ambulance, they tend to see a spike in requests for their service whenever families travel around the country to see family or for staycations etc, so Christmas/New Year is always a busy and expensive time for their Charity. This means during these times the support tends to be lower due to fewer community and challenge events taking place.
 
The NHS has no budget for air transfers and so relies on Lucy Air Ambulance to provide their essential service at no cost. Due to current funding, they’re currently only able to transfer 2 out of every 4 children that need their service. 

Lucy Air Ambulance For Children's Achievements / Goals

Lucy AAC have been flying children to hospital for over 10 years. Despite experiencing significant income loss due to Covid-19, Lucy AAC flew every child who needed an aeroplane transfer and supported the NHS in any way they could during the pandemic. They continue to work closely with NHS transport teams and neonatal/paediatric consultants across the UK to ensure that their service is as widely available to children as possible. The NHS is relying on Lucy AAC now more than ever before to provide this essential service at no cost.

Research Lucy AAC conducted in 2020 with key NHS transport clinicians, showed that they were required to facilitate more time-critical transfers for children needing specialist care. In response, Lucy AAC introduced pre-approved transfer funding to support NHS Centres of Excellence like Birmingham Children’s Hospital and the Great North Children’s Hospital. This meant that NHS transport teams could work with Lucy AAC to mobilise transfers faster. Already these pre-approved funds have proved to be vital for moving children that need to receive transplants and as a direct result of this innovation, in 2020-21 Lucy AAC flew more children for transplants than ever before. 

Support Lucy Air Ambulance For Children

Donate to Lucy Air Ambulance For Children, or check out their social media channels below!