Child and Family Practitioners empower families in the community by providing a range of targeted support and early intervention.
This week, we met with Elana Hagistefanis, Child and Family Practitioner based in Benevolent’s Hurstville space, to learn more about her work and the support her team is delivering.
She joined Benevolent in February 2023. As a Child and Family Practitioner, her day-to-day work often involves direct engagement with children and families within their homes or community settings.
Image of Elana smiling in the Hurstville Office
Meet Elana
Elana’s primary role is to provide evidence-based interventions tailored to the unique needs of each family, often collaborating with external services like education, health professionals and other community services to ensure families receive holistic, wrap-around support that promotes safety and stability.
Through the Sydney Health District, Elana was recently trained as a Perinatal Family Conference (PFC) Facilitator. The role is to facilitate conferences to provide support and care planning for pregnant women and families facing serious child protection concerns, aiming to prevent a newborn from being placed into out-of-home care at birth.
Over the last 12 months, have there been any major trends the team has noticed with the support you deliver?
Our team has noticed an increase in providing service support during the period of restoration. We’re working more frequently with families where children are returning to their parents’ care following time in out of home care.
Working with families in this space often requires intensive case coordination, therapeutic support, and close collaboration with statutory agencies and other services to ensure families are adequately supported throughout this transition.
Have there been any major changes to the support delivered by you and your team?
Our team has undertaken new domestic and family violence training, which has helped shaped our approach and practice response.
It has enhanced our knowledge and skills to identify patterns of abusive behaviour, understand the impacts on children, recognise survivor strengths and protective behaviours, and promote greater system accountability.
How have you found the experience of being trained as Perinatal Family Conference (PFC) Facilitator? How many PFC sessions have you run now?
It has been an insightful experience. The training deepened my understanding of how collaborative, strengths-based approaches can support families during the critical perinatal period.
It has been particularly valuable to learn alongside trainers and facilitators from both NSW Health and the Department of Communities and Justice, highlighting how cross-sector collaboration can improve outcomes for children and their families.
To my knowledge, I am one of the few practitioners from a Non-Government Organisation to have received this training. Since then, I have had the opportunity to co-facilitate a full PFC process, which included an initial pre-meeting with the family followed by three conferences completed throughout the mother’s pregnancy.
What do you enjoy the most about your work?
What I enjoy most is the diversity of support we provide and the flexibility of our program. No two families are the same, and being able to tailor our approach to meet their unique needs ensure our work remains purposeful and meaningful.
One of my most cherished experiences in this role has been working alongside young parents and their baby. It was a privilege be a part of their journey and observe their growth, not just in how they approached parenting, but also in their self-belief and resilience.
Is there anything else you'd like to share about your work?
Next year, I will be participating in a secondment with headspace Bondi Junction to provide family therapy. This will be a great experience to continue developing my skills and knowledge in the therapeutic space.
For more information on our range of Family and Parenting Support services and programs, click here or call 1800 236 762.