Family Dispute Resolution Mechanisms (these should be in your textbook???):
a) The courts - Counselling, mediation, adjudication
So the Family Court (Federal) has jurisdiction over matters pertaining to separation, divcorce and other marital disputes. Reference is also usually made to the Child Cases Program and the focus on less adversarial trial.
The state courts will determine other family matters (e.g. De Facto and Domestic relationships) and adoption as these are residual powers. HOWEVER, the Commonwelath Powers (De Facto Relationships) Act 2008 NSW surrenders the powers concerning de facto relationships to the federal court. You may have seen articles about this in the paper. It has not yet taken effect because the commonwelath must first accept the powers.
Should also be noted that the Federal Magistrates Court created in 2000 by the Federal Magistrates Act 1999 was also created to improve the efficiency of the family courts. It has similar jurisdiction to the family court, but can't hear matters including adotion, property disputes over 700k and applications of validity and nullity.
b) Family Relationship Centres
Created 2006 reforms and from the Every picture tells a story report and focus on ADR.
c) Case Conferencing / Other Mediation
I'm pretty sure this is compulsory now.
Hope that gives you some sort of idea. In an essay it's always about the effectiveness of these mechanisms, so you can talk about delay, cost, compliance etc.