Momentum continues to build for The Children’s Hospital at Westmead (CHW) $659.1 million stage 2 redevelopment, with NSW Health Minister Ryan Park announcing construction of the centrepiece 14‑storey building complete. 

The new building features a major expansion of intensive care facilities, including dedicated paediatric and neonatal intensive care units spanning two floors. These new facilities will support patients like 11-month-old Elijah and his family.  

Elijah was born prematurely at 26 weeks, weighing 600 grams. Shortly after birth he was diagnosed with a gastrointestinal condition called necrotising enterocolitis, requiring urgent surgery at CHW. 

“The first time I saw him he was covered in cannulas, with tubes everywhere, and was laying in a little humidicrib. He looked like a tiny, fragile doll,” Elijah’s mother Samantha said. 

The family spent more than 100 days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). During this time, Elijah was also diagnosed with chronic lung disease. 

In his short lifetime, Elijah has frequented the emergency department and Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), undergone various hospital admissions and continues to receive outpatient care.  

The hospital quickly became a “second home” to the family as they balanced the challenges of caring for Elijah in hospital with raising their two-year-old daughter, Lulu at home.   

Intensive care units in the new building will support parents to stay by the bedside of their child, with single patient rooms and dedicated care zones offering a carer bed.  

These new carer facilities in intensive care were recently introduced at Randwick’s new building, and together with Westmead, mark a first for NSW paediatric healthcare.  

The units also feature state-of-the-art medical pendants and automated dispensing cabinets, designed to enhance efficient delivery of critical care.    

“Having the option to sleep by the bedside is so reassuring, and a dedicated recliner chair will mean parents can spend more time doing skin-to-skin and quality time with their babies.” 

The family have discovered lighter moments by connecting with other parents in shared communal spaces – an aspect that will be greatly expanded in the new building by offering dedicated rooms for play, therapies, adolescents, families, parents, and meal preparation. 

“Having more spaces for families to be together and for parents to take little breaks is so vitally important,” Samantha said. “The hospital is like its own little community, one that you never want to be part of but still is very special in its own way.” 

With construction reaching completion, staff across the campus are working behind the scenes to prepare for the transition into the new environments in late March 2026. 

The new building provides new and expanded critical care and acute healthcare services, including:    

• single-patient rooms throughout the building, furnished with a carer bed to support family-togetherness. Private ensuites in all the non-intensive care units

• expanded cancer services including a new day oncology treatment centre and inpatient units

• new perioperative unit with operating theatres, cardiac catheterisation labs and interventional laboratory  

• new complex and acute medical inpatient units, and surgical short stay unit

• state-wide service for burns, offering inpatient and outpatient facilities

• larger pharmacy and new oncology pharmacy, equipped with a robot to streamline the delivery of medication.

The project is being delivered by Health Infrastructure and Scyne Advisory with builder Roberts Co and BLP Architects.  

Significant philanthropic contributions towards the project have been raised by Sydney Children's Hospitals Foundation.