Description
Location: Inner-eastern Melbourne (exact location shared with shortlisted candidates)
Hours: 20–40 hours/week. 9am to 3pm on 3 weekdays and preferably plus one weekend day. Additional work available with flexibility if the preferred candidate wants to.
Compensation: Premium rate (above market or NDIS guidelines). We are uncompromising in our goal to secure the absolute best support for our daughter, and we are prepared to pay a top-tier rate commensurate with your clinical/academic expertise.
About the Role
We are seeking a highly experienced Learning Support Assistant — ideally a Paediatric Occupational Therapist, OT graduate, or Early Intervention Specialist — to provide 1:1 classroom and daily-routine support for our bright, affectionate and energetic young daughter. She is in her final kindergarten year and will start school next year.
The role involves supporting her within her educational environment, holiday programs, and occasionally at extracurricular activities. You will join an established care team and serve as the consistent daily link between her parents and classroom educators helping support strategies run smoothly across settings. A focus of the role is helping her grow her independence and friendships, stepping back support as she succeeds. (Detailed background will be shared with shortlisted candidates.)
About Our Daughter
She is a bright, affectionate and energetic girl who loves imaginative pretend play, sandpit, cooking and movement-based play. She is multilingual.
She tends to learn language in whole phrases and picks up modelled vocabulary quickly, and is working toward using new words and grammar spontaneously in conversation. She has a strong need for autonomy and finds it hard to accept “no” and to move on from favourite activities. She thrives with predictable routines, clear visual boundaries, playful high-repetition practice, choices, and warm, calm co-regulation.
Key Responsibilities
Behavioural & emotional support: Use visual schedules and timers, forewarning and choices, and gentle, low-demand phrasing to support her through classroom transitions.
Co-regulation & boundary setting: Use co-regulation techniques (e.g. deep breathing, movement breaks) to support regulation and manage impulsivity. Use declarative language (e.g. “I can see the pencils need to stay on the desk”) rather than direct commands to set limits and negotiate gently, and support her to accept boundaries.
Speech & language support: Help move her grammar from “copied” to “spontaneous” everyday talk, with a current focus on past-tense verbs and correct pronoun use (he/she/his/her).
Evidence-based play: Embed therapeutic frameworks into daily play, including Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) for vocabulary depth, Colourful Semantics for sentence building, and Conversational Recasting (“Say Less, Stress, Go Slow, Show, Repeat”).
Social scaffolding: Guide peer interactions — greetings, gaining attention appropriately, reading non-verbal cues, asking for consent, and sharing control in play — and actively help build her independence and friendships.
Daily routine assistance: Discreetly and respectfully support her daily self-care routines to build her independence.
Detailed reporting: Provide comprehensive, daily written handovers to the care team on her social, academic and behavioural progress.
Requirements
The Ideal Candidate
Holds advanced qualifications in Paediatric Occupational Therapy, Early Childhood Special Education, Speech Pathology, or Behavioural Psychology. We are aiming high for this role and are happy to engage a highly experienced — or even over-qualified — professional.
Understands sensory processing, neurodevelopmental profiles, and how to adapt environments to support a child's attention and regulation.
Substantial real-world experience working 1:1 with children who require behavioural, social or emotional scaffolding.
Exceptional patience, firm but gentle boundary-setting, and the ability to remain calm and regulated when a child tests limits or struggles to accept “no”.
Physically active and happy to engage in dynamic play, from the playground to supporting an extracurricular activity.
An excellent communicator who integrates seamlessly into a classroom without overstepping the lead teacher's authority. We also welcome fresh clinical perspectives and value input and opinions that strengthen her support.
Essential Requirements
A valid Victorian Working with Children Check.
A National Police Check.
Current First Aid and CPR, or a willingness to obtain it.
