About Ellen Barron Family Centre

I realised I haven't really talked much about what Ellen Barron is really like, so before telling you all about our week there, I thought I'd paint a picture.

The facility at Ellen Barron has been custom built on hospital grounds.  There are rooms for up to 20 families and it has a large dining area with microwaves, fridges, toaster, sandwich press, kettle and sinks.  They provide lots of snack foods and breakfast stuff and meals arrive in the fridges for lunch and dinner.  There is also a play room and outdoor play area for the kids and three lounge areas where they do classes (how sleep works, nutrition, parenting, stress management, circle of care etc.) all through the days or for you to relax if you get a chance.  Each room has it's own bathroom and separate room for the nursery (with the most enormous cots you've ever seen).

It is a fabulous place and has been really well thought out.  As well as the facility itself it is staffed with nurses who are assigned 'pods', so you  have two or three nurses looking after five rooms for the first few days when we are all going out of our minds and the babies are going nuts (by the last night they scale it back to only a few nurses for the whole centre as you are supposed to know more about what you are doing by then).  Each morning and afternoon one of your nurses goes over how things are going and makes sure the plan is on track and discusses if we need to change our strategy.  There is also a doctor and a pedeatrician who check the kids over to make sure they are all ok health wise.

http://www.health.qld.gov.au/rch/professionals/cchs_rsp.asp