Co-founder and director of Personalised Support Systems, disability support, Melbourne
Fernando Berghella is an Australian disability support director and the co-founder of Personalised Support Systems, a provider running two hubs in Melbourne.[1][2] He came to it after more than a decade working in the sector, with formal training in exercise physiology, and his stated premise is that support should be personal rather than procedural.[1]
He founded the company in 2018 with a co-founder, Matthew, against what they saw as the normal shape of the industry: rotating rosters, clinical language, and a relationship that resets every time the staffing does.[1] Their alternative is matching on personality and then holding the match in place, which the company states plainly as support that should feel like friendship.[1] He works inside the hubs rather than managing them from an office, and remains reachable to participants and families.[1]
He is listed here as a Community Leader, the role this directory uses for the people who convene rather than facilitate.[5] His current venture is Path Collective, a discovery platform for facilitators, communities and experiences, launching first in Melbourne.[5][7]
His own company's account of him gives two facts and no dates: more than a decade in the disability sector before founding anything, and formal training in exercise physiology.[1]
His LinkedIn profile adds a career shape to that. It records earlier work as a disability support worker at Interchange Inner East and a position at Cerebral Palsy Support Network, and a physiology major at Deakin University.[4] The profile is the source for all three and it could not be read directly, so they sit here as his own account of himself rather than as checked facts. The years are not published anywhere and are not guessed at.
Exercise physiology is still in the business rather than behind it. Allied health at Personalised Support Systems is exercise physiology and counselling, which is a narrow list for a provider of that size and matches the training he arrived with.[3]
The company has run since 2018 and supports participants across all age groups, with the public site written mostly for young adults.[1][3] It operates two purpose-built hubs: Nunawading, the original, serving Melbourne's east across Box Hill, Ringwood, Doncaster, Blackburn and Glen Waverley, and Sunbury, serving the north west across Melton, Diggers Rest, Gisborne and the Macedon Ranges.[3][6]
The hubs are the investment the company leads with. Both carry music rooms, art studios, gyms, sensory spaces and kitchens, and the programme timetable is built out of them: pottery, music, cooking, fitness, drama, art, life skills, LEGO and a session called TinkerTech.[1][3] Alongside the group programmes it provides one-to-one support covering personal care, community access and sleepovers, and allied health in exercise physiology and counselling.[3]
Berghella is one of two directors named on the team page, alongside his co-founder.[2]
The second hub opened on Horne Street, Sunbury, on 28 May 2023, and is the one piece of his work covered independently. Berghella is a Sunbury local as well as its director, and gave the local press the reasoning in the first person: as someone living in the area and working in disability support, he had concluded the community needed services of this kind and did not have them.[6]
The demand he described was already past the building. Around 190 families had signed up before the doors opened, against a capacity of 200, so a waiting list was expected almost immediately. The hub created roughly 150 local jobs and opened with a community day carrying live music, food trucks and trials of the programmes themselves.[6] The state member for Sunbury, Josh Bull, had visited beforehand and framed it in terms of belonging and social inclusion for young people living with a disability.[6]
Berghella's own summary of the company to that paper is the shortest statement of it anywhere: youthful, family orientated, and present in times of desperate need.[6]
The company states four principles and they read as one argument. Support is relational, and matching is done on personality. The worker's job is to build capability rather than dependency. The same support worker stays, because trust is a function of not being replaced. Families are kept in the conversation rather than reported to.[1]
The hiring follows from it. The team is deliberately younger and positioned as relatable role models rather than clinical carers, and the company points to low staff turnover as the thing that lets a relationship accumulate.[1] Berghella's own compression of the model is that if you match the right people, everything else follows.[1]
The line the site puts hardest is about what the support is for: young adults with disabilities deserve real social lives and genuine friendships, and deserve to be seen for who they are rather than for what is in their plan.[3]
Path Collective is a discovery platform built to connect people with facilitators, communities and experiences. It is launching first in Melbourne and is currently open as a founding membership.[7] Cameron Quin records Berghella as the person behind it; the site itself names nobody, so that attribution is his.[5]
The argument it makes is against algorithmic discovery. Its own line is that the algorithm is not qualified to decide how you spend your weekends, and is definitely not qualified to decide who changes your life.[7] The gap it names is visibility rather than supply: thousands of facilitators nobody knows exist, and communities that somehow still leave people at home on a weekend.[7]
The first Melbourne programme is three recurring formats, conscious social nights built around dinner and discussion, a Sunday run club that ends in coffee, and ice bath sessions run with breathwork.[7] Around the membership it runs an ambassador track for community leaders and connectors, and a listing route for facilitators, coaches and wellness practitioners.[7]
That is the overlap Cameron names in listing him: two answers to the same problem, that the people doing this work are hard to find, and neither of them trying to be the practice itself.[5]
Entries without a mark are as stated by the practitioner and have not been checked by Henosis.
This entry is maintained by Henosis and written from the sources listed on it. Claims we could not source have not been made. The mark on this profile was earned by assessment and was never purchased.
Entry 300037