A committee, steered by Emeritus Prof Martin Ferguson and involving a Dunedin City councillor, doctors, lawyers and other professionals, has worked for two years on the project.
Possible sites for the respite house - which would be a purpose-built facility offering care to up to five children at any time - have been identified.
An architectural firm has offered to design the building free, and other offers of free material for the facility have been made.
Prof Ferguson was confident there was enough support in the community for the facility to be built, but now wanted to ensure ongoing funding for the respite house to make it a reality.
"On the committee we have all the expertise we need, and we also have two of the younger consultant paediatricians willing to work in the facility," Prof Ferguson said.
"I think we are ready to take this to the next level now."
Prof Ferguson has met local MPs - including Health Minister David Clark - as well as Mayor Dave Cull, charitable trusts and respite care providers to discuss his concept.
The original plan from Prof Ferguson, who was a former member of the Otago Community Hospice board, was to build a children's hospice.
However, research showed little demand for it - but a need for dedicated, purpose-built, paediatric respite facilities.
Members of the committee had visited respite facilities here and overseas. That experience suggested that for complex, high-need patients a new building designed for children was preferable to converting existing buildings.
"We want it within the Dunedin area for ease of travel, although we would want to take children from all over Otago," Prof Ferguson said.
The proposed new respite centre would operate on a different basis to the Ronald McDonald houses, which support families when their child is in a hospital away from home.
Instead, it would offer families with seriously ill children living at home a place where those children could be cared for when their parents, carers and siblings needed a break.
"It does work, so long is there is proper clinical back-up," Prof Ferguson said.
"Also, the family has to be comfortable with it, and the child has to get to know the place, have someone spend time with them in there, because they have to be comfortable in there, too.
"It's not just the child [with a serious illness] who suffers, the whole household suffers, the whole family suffers, financially, socially, and that's why respite is a useful thing to do . . . it's a break."
Prof Ferguson hoped to obtain Government funding to cover operating expenses for the respite centre, and was talking to officials about what might be available.
"We have been to the Ministry of Health and the Ministry for Children and they are considering our concept."
