Jenny Stapleton’s Legacy Helps Redcliffe Newborns

When Jenny Stapleton’s family asked for donations to Redcliffe Hospital instead of flowers after her death, they could hardly have chosen a more fitting place for the money to go.

The former Redcliffe Hospital midwife had spent much of her career caring for mothers and babies there. Decades later, when Jenny became seriously ill with lung cancer, it was Redcliffe Hospital’s palliative care team that supported her in her final days.

Jenny died on 16 November 2025, surrounded by people she loved. What happened next brought those two ends of her connection with the hospital together in an unexpected way.

Elsewhere in Redcliffe, a community fundraising campaign had been trying to raise $52,000 for a Babyroo — specialised equipment used to warm and care for newborn babies, including those needing immediate resuscitation after birth.

The campaign had raised $40,243.67. It was about $12,000 short.

Jenny’s memorial fundraiser would go on to raise $12,117.

Together, the two efforts meant Redcliffe Hospital could get its Babyroo. Earlier this month, Jenny’s family joined hospital staff and representatives of Crew Legal as the equipment was welcomed into the birth suite, carrying a plaque in her memory.

Read: More Beds, Broader Services and Local Jobs at Heart of Redcliffe Hospital Expansion

The $12,000 gap

The push for the Babyroo had begun before Jenny died.

Kippa-Ring law firm Crew Legal had chosen the $52,000 machine as the fundraising target for its fourth annual Spring Gala Ball in October 2025. The event raised $40,243.67 — a substantial result, but still about $12,000 shy of what was needed.

After Jenny’s death the following month, her sister Louise Ryan established a memorial fundraiser through Raise it for Redcliffe Hospital.

The decision to ask for hospital donations rather than flowers grew naturally from Jenny’s connection with Redcliffe. Her family told supporters that she had worked there as a midwife for much of her career and had also received care from the hospital during her final days.

The money would go towards the Babyroo.

Friends, relatives and former colleagues responded. Some left messages remembering Jenny not simply as someone they had known, but as a midwife they had worked beside.

By the time the memorial appeal had raised $12,117, two quite separate stories had converged: a community campaign that had fallen just short of its target, and a family’s decision to remember a midwife by giving something back to her hospital.

Jenny’s name will be remembered

For parents, the Babyroo’s importance may become apparent in the first minutes after a birth does not go entirely to plan.

The Dräger Babyroo TN300 is an open-care warmer designed to give clinicians ready access to a newborn while maintaining the baby’s temperature and supporting emergency resuscitation. Depending on its configuration, respiratory support and other integrated technologies can be available at the same station.

It is equipment intended for use from the delivery room through neonatal care, including when a baby needs immediate help after birth.

At Redcliffe, that places the Babyroo within a busy maternity service. Hospital figures show more than 1,600 babies were born there in its last publicly reported financial-year figures, while the wider hospital is now beginning a major expansion that will include new maternity and birthing services.

The current expansion plan will add 255 overnight beds by 2031, but the new Babyroo is already in place.

Read: Inside Redcliffe Hospital’s Faster FibroScan Pathway

For Jenny’s family, its arrival closes a circle they could not have foreseen when they asked for donations instead of flowers.

Jenny spent much of her career at Redcliffe Hospital caring for mothers and babies. The hospital cared for her towards the end of her own life. Now money given in her memory has helped put a $52,000 piece of newborn-care equipment into the birth suite where another generation of Redcliffe families will be cared for.

And there, on the Babyroo itself, is Jenny Stapleton’s name.

Published 20-September-2026