Women’s and Children Hospital’s Foundation spearheads new Family and Wellbeing Hub for Elizabeth Vale

New mothers will be able to bond with their sick babies in a new health hub in Adelaide’s north, after a philanthropist saw the incredible work within a special-care unit.

A new wellbeing hub in Adelaide’s north featuring short-term residential stays for new mums has won $26m in federal funding to start the build.

The new Community Health and Wellbeing Hub, slated to be built within a new health precinct in Elizabeth Vale, will extend support services by the Women’s and Children’s Health Network

The Hub will offer short-term accommodation for new mothers, community spaces, education and health services focusing on early child development and pregnancy and parenting support.

Artist impression of a new Community Health and Wellbeing Hub within the Northern Health and Wellbeing Precinct. Picture: Studio Nine Architects

It will also feature programs aimed at strengthening community connection, a student-led allied health clinic that provides affordable care, training of new care models and sleep rooms to support parents of babies in Lyell McEwin Hospital’s Special Care Baby Unit.

Verity Gobbett, CEO of the Women’s Children’s Hospital Foundation – which is leading the project – said it would bring essential care services “closer to home” for those northern suburbs residents.

“We’ve got one in three of South Australia’s most developmentally vulnerable five-year-olds living in the area, many young families and groups experiencing social-cultural disadvantages,” Ms Gobbett said.

Artist impression of a new Community Health and Wellbeing Hub within the Northern Health and Wellbeing Precinct. Picture: Studio Nine Architects

“We would arguably say that these are the families that need it the most.”

Ms Gobbet said there was a need for a facility that provides “early intervention and prevention”, which was made possible when the foundation received a generous donation from a philanthropist.

“Our donor had a special connection to the special-care baby unit,” she said.

“They saw that when a baby is admitted to the special-care baby unit, often mums don’t have means to stay close to the hospital, and many of them travel home, to outer north areas, so they miss that opportunity to bond.

“(The facility) will support them until they can take their baby home.”

A finish date and official opening have not yet been announced. The project also involve Playford Council, Flinders University and the state government.

Development minister Catherine King made the funding announcement on Wednesday, saying two projects in Adelaide were set to receive a total of $33m.

A new arts and culture facility precinct in Glenside, about 5km southeast of Adelaide, also secured $7m in funding.

Led by the Adelaide Central School of Art, the project will be a multi-use cultural facility featuring studios and galleries, a First Nations artist residential studio, educational spaces, a native edible garden and a social enterprise cafe.