The Royal Children's Hospital, Mater Children's Hospital and The Prince Charles Hospital have delivered more than 200 years of service between them to the children and young people of Queensland.

In merging the three institutions we must continue to value this history while building a new unified workplace culture with a clearly articulated vision, mission, and value statement and philosophy of care.

When firmly embedded in the new culture, these principles will guide how patients and staff are treated, how they will interact and treat others and provide the clear direction for our family-centred care.

The first of these workshops occurred on November 28 2006 and included a broad cross-section of staff from the three hospitals, regional paediatricians, key partners and, importantly, several parent advocates.

Over the past two and a half years, further development work has been done with key stakeholders regarding service planning, masterplanning, project definition, schematic design and developed design, which will continue throughout 2010.