About The Children's Hospital at Westmead

The Children’s Hospital at Westmead provides quality care and clinical services to 90,000 sick and injured children each year. It is the largest paediatric centre in NSW and provides excellent care for children from NSW, Australia and across the Pacific. Specialist care is provided to children within a positive, caring and healing environment.

Our clinical expertise, community education, advocacy for improved child health and ground-breaking research into childhood illnesses combine to make The Children’s Hospital at Westmead a world-class institution.

The Children’s Hospital at Westmead is a public hospital with more than 4,700 staff working in 150 departments. Sick children and their families are cared for each year in a family-focused healing environment – including 39,000 inpatient admissions, 65,000 emergency department presentations and 771,000 outpatient occasions of service.

Children with problems such as severe burns, major heart conditions and liver and kidney diseases are referred to The Children’s Hospital at Westmead because it houses leading speciality units within the hospital grounds. The Children’s Hospital at Westmead is home to the NSW Paediatric Burns Unit, the NSW Paediatric Liver Transplant Unit, the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, the first Paediatric Tumour Bank in the southern hemisphere, the NSW Newborn Screening Service and the National Poisons Information Centre.

Our location

Our hospital is situated in central Sydney, neighboring the Parramatta CBD. It is easy to get to us by car, train and bus from anywhere in Sydney. We are close to many amenities and attractions making our hospital a convenient and enjoyable place to work and live.

Some places you will find near our hospital is Western Sydney Parklands, Parramatta Park, Westfield Parramatta shopping centre, Raging Waters Sydney waterpark and Sydney Zoo.

Our history

Established in 1880 as The Sydney Hospital for Sick Children, its name was changed to the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children in 1904 when King Edward VII granted use of the appellation ‘Royal’ and his consort, Queen Alexandra, agreed to the use of her name.

Originally based at Glebe Point, it quickly outgrew its small building and relocated in 1906 to Camperdown, where it remained for 89 years until its move to Westmead in 1995 to better serve the growing region of Western Sydney. This move involved amalgamation with most of the paediatric services of nearby Westmead Hospital, and it was renamed The Children’s Hospital at Westmead.