Who We Are

Children First Foundation (CFF) is an Australian based charity. We facilitate life-changing, sometimes life-saving, surgery for disadvantaged children from developing countries.

These children are unable to access the medical care that they need, as the complex, and often multiple surgical procedures required, are not possible in their own countries. CFF has enabled over 450 children, from 32 countries to receive the care and treatment they need.

Our Work

CFF assists children with a wide range of congenital conditions or acquired injuries. Each case referred to us is carefully assessed to ensure that the condition is operable, and that suitable treatment isn’t available in their own country. Most of the children we assist are suffering from conditions that in Australia would have been treated immediately at birth or diagnosis, dealt with correctly at the time of injury or, due to better living conditions, simply never encountered at all. The inequalities in our world are never clearer than when hearing the stories of the children who pass through our doors.

Pre and post-surgery the children are cared for at our Retreat. The Retreat is supervised 24/7 by a team of volunteers and skilled staff, including nurses. Volunteer teachers provide educational activities to support the children’s learning during their stay. A range of physiotherapists and other allied health specialists donate their time to ensure that rehabilitation and recovery programs are carefully followed to maximise outcomes from the surgery. This unique model of community-based care provides a home-away-from-home for the children as they prepare for, and recover from, life-changing surgery.

Following surgery and rehabilitation, the children return to their homes and families healthier, happier and with renewed hope for their futures.

Impact

The direct outcomes of our Program range from saving a child’s life to increasing mobility and other physical functionality, removing disfigurements and reducing pain.

These surgical interventions also have a much broader impact on our children and their families than simply improving their health. They often remove some of the barriers faced in achieving long term economic independence such as access to education, work and social acceptance. The impacts are often much more wide reaching than the individual. For example, increasing a child’s independence may allow a mother to return to work, resulting in extra funds for the family ensuring that siblings can attend school. The support ripples out to improve the lives of the families and wider community of the children we assist.

Why support us

Any funding that we receive will ultimately allow more young people to access to the life-changing surgery they need.

Despite incredible support from the medical sector there are many expenses that we still need to source funding for. Even where a child surgical care is sourced completely pro-bono, we still need to cover costs such as international and domestic travel expenses, food and supplies for children and carers, rehab and pre/post-surgical costs such as blood tests and x-rays etc.

It costs us approximately $81 per child, per day to run our program, as CFF is not eligible to receive government funding, we rely on the generosity of donors.