Excellence Awards - allied health 2026

Individual Leadership

Elizabeth Bancroft
Frances Bilbao
Sharon Hennessey

Team Excellence

Clinical Operations Team - Gidget Foundation Australia
Family Satety Team - Royal Melbourne Hospital
Motivate Kids team

Read the media release

Read about the finalists in the other 2026 HESTA Excellence Awards categories

aged care | community services | disability services

Individual Leadership

Elizabeth Bancroft

Bancroft Psychology | Hope Affirm Thrive
South Perth WA

Elizabeth is recognised for building Australia's first neurodiversity-affirming IVF psychological support program, Hope Affirm Thrive, supporting the unique needs of neurodivergent patients.

Elizabeth is a Clinical and Counselling Psychologist and founder of Bancroft Psychology. Stemming from her own lived experience as a late-identified Autistic and ADHD psychologist who navigated a 13-year fertility journey, she built the program she needed and couldn't find. Her work focuses on evidence-based, trauma-informed approaches and improving system-wide, universal practice in neurodiversity-affirming clinical care.

She has developed a peer-reviewed clinical design framework, presented at national conferences, built a research collaboration with Dr Alice Domar at Inception Fertility, and is advocating for Medicare-funded IVF psychological support in Australia.

Frances Bilbao

Mums Matter Psychology
Williamstown VIC

Frances is recognised for her work as a clinical psychologist transforming access to perinatal mental health care, including founding Mums Matter Psychology.

Mums Matter Psychology is Australia's only fully bulk-billed private perinatal mental health service, founded to remove cost and geography barriers to accessing specialist care. Since establishing the service in 2015, it has grown from a small local practice to a national workforce, supporting over 5,000 women in the past year alone. Frances’ innovative care model integrates bulk-billed access, telehealth delivery, partnerships with maternal and child health services and technology-enabled systems to reach women who would otherwise go without support, including in rural and remote areas, those experiencing financial hardship, refugees and families affected by family violence.

To support the broader sector, Frances also founded the Perinatal Professionals Hub to build evidence-based training and resources to health professionals.

Sharon Hennessey

Not Just Bendy Hypermobility Services
Eight Mile Plains QLD

Sharon is recognised for her leadership as a physiotherapist transforming care for people with hypermobility, improving diagnosis, management and clinical education.

Generalised joint hypermobility is common, but once it becomes symptomatic, such as Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder and Hypermobile-Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, it is frequently underdiagnosed and misunderstood. In 2020 Sharon founded Not Just Bendy Hypermobility Services in Brisbane, building a team of physiotherapists dedicated to complex, evidence-informed care. The clinic, recognised as an Ehlers-Danlos Society Centre of Excellence, has supported over 3,600 patients, including through telehealth and video movement analysis to improve access and consistency.

Sharon has made research and education central to her work, co-authoring an international clinical pathway publication. She delivers national and international training and launched The Hypermobility Project to give clinicians practical tools for assessing and managing hypermobility.

Team Excellence

Clinical Operations Team

Gidget Foundation Australia
North Sydney NSW

The Clinical Operations Team at Gidget Foundation Australia is recognised for transforming perinatal mental health care nationally by building new care pathways, training clinicians through its Workforce Development Program, educating healthcare professional through Gidget Training Institute, tackling geographic inequality and expanding equity of access to bulk-billed psychological support.

Spanning intake and triage, clinical workforce, workforce development and training, the team brings together the three functions to provide specialised, bulk-billed psychological support for parents where they need it. By building new care pathways, training the next generation of perinatal clinicians, and expanding telehealth into underserved communities, the team is working to address longstanding gaps in access and expertise that has left too many families without support.

The Gidget Training Institute and Australia's first Graduate Diploma in Perinatal Mental Health have created a specialised workforce pipeline.

Family Safety Team

Royal Melbourne Hospital
Parkville VIC

The Family Safety Team is recognised as a leader in hospital-based family violence response, driving system-wide change through policy development, digital innovation, research, and evidence-based education.

Through partnerships with First Nations, LGBTQIA+, and disability services, the team has embedded a trauma-informed, whole-of-hospital approach that promotes safety, wellbeing, and recovery for patients affected by family violence.

Using a multidisciplinary framework that integrates social work, psychology, occupational therapy, and nursing, the team ensures victim-survivors remain at the centre of care. Their commitment to innovation is demonstrated through the establishment of Australia’s first multidisciplinary allied health outpatient clinic for victim-survivors of family violence, a growing body of peer-reviewed research, and enhanced medical record screening systems. Through clinical leadership, workforce development, and service innovation, the Family Safety Team has strengthened the Royal Melbourne Hospital’s capacity to identify and respond to family violence, improving patient safety and setting a benchmark for best practice.

Motivate Kids team

Broadview SA

The Motivate Kids team is recognised for transforming how children access developmental support by shifting occupational therapy beyond the clinic and into the everyday environments where children learn, play and grow.

Rather than relying solely on individual therapy, the team developed an evidence-informed model that partners with early childhood services and primary schools to build the capability of educators, strengthen learning environments and embed developmental support into daily routines. Through professional learning, in-room coaching, developmental screening, small-group programs and environmental design, the team has supported more than 500 educators across metropolitan and regional South Australia. In partnership with Emali Early Learning in 2018, the team also co-designed me@three, an innovative whole-centre model focused on optimising development at age three.

Their work is improving developmental, educational and wellbeing outcomes for hundreds of children while creating sustainable, system-wide change.