Mercy Health’s O’Connell Family Centre (OFC) is an Early Parenting Centre (EPC) based in Canterbury, Victoria.
Early Parenting Centre's strive to support happy, healthy, safe and thriving babies and toddlers by promoting the parent-child relationship, and equipping parents with strategies to achieve their parenting goals. These goals are often in areas such as sleep and settling, child behavior, and parent and child health and wellbeing. EPC's recognise that the health and wellbeing of the primary caregiver, and whole family is vital to children's development and outcomes. EPC's provide specialist support for Victorian families with children aged 0-4 years.
Our Volunteers fulfill two main roles; Admittance Day Caring Crew welcoming and orientation assistance for our patients and as Exit Day Caring Crew to assist our residential stay parents during the late afternoon/early evening period.
Benefits of Volunteering
- Build rewarding connections with like-minded people
- Make a positive difference to someone else’s day
- Share your passion, skills and experience with us
- Build confidence and new skills
- Help contribute to our Mercy Health community
We provide a comprehensive onboarding, orientation and training process for our Volunteers.
**Currently we have no vacancies in our volunteer program for 2025/2026.
Please note we require all our volunteers to have a number of current vaccinations or serology evidence of immunity. Please feel free to discuss these requirements with our Volunteer Coordinator upon application.
I would like to volunteer
What Our Volunteers Do
Admission Day Caring Crew
Our Admission Day Caring Crew volunteer role provides a warm welcome and assistance to all our patients when they arrive for their residential stay.
Volunteers will greet patients, offer assistance with their belongings, escort them to their rooms, orientate them to the communal areas they will use during their stay, offer refreshments and provide assistance with babies and children while parents get settled in.
This role is every Monday morning from 8.30am to 12.00pm
About Mercy Health Early Parenting Centres
Mercy Health operates two Early Parenting Centres in Victoria – the O’Connell Family Centre in Canterbury and the Woi-wurrung-yagila-wulumperi Whittlesea Early Parenting Centre in South Morang. They provide free early parenting support for Victorian families with children from birth to four years of age. These centres are dedicated to helping babies and toddlers grow up happy, healthy, safe and thriving by promoting strong parent-child relationships and equipping parents with practical strategies to achieve their parenting goals.
Support is offered across key areas including sleep and settling, feeding, understanding baby and toddler cues, toddler behaviour, and overall parent and child health and wellbeing. Each centre offers day stay and residential programs tailored to individual family needs. The day stay program runs for six hours, while the residential program offers two-to-four-night stays. The Whittlesea centre also provides telehealth support, enabling families to continue working on their goals from home after discharge.
Mercy Health’s Early Parenting Centres are staffed by compassionate, multidisciplinary teams committed to holistic, family-centred care. Both centres are part of Mercy Health, a Catholic organisation dedicated to compassionate care and guided by the values of hospitality, respect, innovation, stewardship, teamwork and compassion.
For more information, visit Early Parenting Centres
