In a presentation to the Otago District Health Board hospital advisory committee meeting this week, board child health clinical leader Dr David Barker sought commitment to a strategy to improve services.
Prof Taylor said he and others had been pushing for this for at least eight years.
About four years ago a report, known as Strategy J, was developed through a child health advisory group, but had never been implemented by the board.
This was a pity because while some of its proposals would have cost money, others were about integrating services already available and were about smarter ways of doing things.
Most of the plan would still be relevant.
Dr Barker told the committee child health needed to be higher on the nation's agenda, given its second-from-bottom ranking on 25 OECD countries' child health ratings.
Children's services were often not thought of as mainstream, regarded as an add-on or afterthought.
Staff in Otago did excellent work, but the inadequacy of the facilities they worked in, such as the Newborn Intensive Care Unit, made that stressful for both them and the families they were dealing with.
Some children were still cared for in adult wards.
Plans for the relocation of the unit and the children's ward at Dunedin Hospital have yet to receive funding from the Government.
Dr Barker said services covering adolescents, child mental health and chronic conditions such as obesity and co-ordination of care for children with disabilities were required.
Committee member Louise Rosson questioned whether not having a strategy would stop any work being done at the practical level.
Dr Barker said a strategy giving a commitment to improving services would help get the message to the whole of the organisation that the board saw children and young people's health as a priority.
Without that, everything had to be achieved from the ground up.
He cited the case of the child protection team in Dunedin Hospital, which worked from a small office in the basement of the children's pavilion.
It would like all parts of the organisation which dealt with children to take some responsibility for child protection, but it was very difficult for such a small group to get that message across on its own.
Otago could learn from Southland which already had a strategy with a vision, principles and goals.
Committee and board chairman Richard Thomson said he could not see why a strategy could not be driven from within a department and he was sure the board would endorse that.
"I think what people are saying is that they want to know that somebody gives a damn and that somebody is us. They want to know we care about the service, that we notice, we care and we want something to happen."
Dr Barker recommended the board create a child and youth strategy, make a commitment to achieve health and disability sector standards for children and young people, support national initiatives for comprehensive and integrated child health services and commit to child protection as a shared responsibility for all staff dealing with children.
Chief operating officer Vivian Blake said creating a strategy would give the opportunity for more liaison with community services which catered for much of child and youth health needs.
She said she would be happy to work with Dr Barker to see how a strategy could be developed, linking with Southland and learning from its experience.
