Health Minister Reba Meagher sounded the death knell yesterday at the back end of announcements she said made "big winners" of Shellharbour residents - a family care centre and a home-birthing service.

The replacement measures were decided without the knowledge of area midwives, who have campaigned for more than a decade to retain maternity services at the hospital.

The NSW Nurses Association is furious.

"The area health service has finally pulled the pin for women in the southern suburbs," NSW Nurses Association Illawarra representative Angela Pridham said.

"Neither the midwives of Wollongong Hospital or Shellharbour Hospital were consulted over the decisions made today, despite the CEO Terry Clout saying all stakeholders had been notified.

"This has been a closure by stealth for Shellharbour maternity services and a gradual downgrading of services for women in the southern suburbs over the past 10 years.

"To say that a home-birthing service will be introduced in the Illawarra with no consultation with the midwives is ridiculous, and to offer up a family care centre in place of post-natal beds is simply replacing the Kiama Care Cottage, which has recently closed its doors."

The family care centre will begin operating from the hospital's defunct maternity unit within the next six months. It will incorporate early childhood-type services and post-discharge midwifery support such as help with breastfeeding, settling and sleep management.

Ms Meagher said the centre was a first for the Illawarra. It would allow "new mothers and their babies to move from hospital to their home with the support of intensive midwife back-up and access to a one-stop shop for ongoing support and care".

The minister said the new home-birthing arrangements, modelled on a program operating from St George Hospital, would give Shellharbour's expectant mothers greater choice.