Early Start Australia - Ashmore
Early Start Australia | QLD | Ashmore (formerly Grow On Children’s Therapy) has been providing Occupational Therapy and Speech and Language Pathology services to the Central and Southern Gold Coast region and Northern NSW since 2013. Our services are provided to children and young adults (birth to 18 years) and our services are delivered in our clinic, via Telehealth and offer mobile services at childcare, pre-school, school or in a home setting.
Our team are committed to helping develop children and adolescent’s life skills to enable them to participate in daily activities to the best of their ability and achieve their goals. We have a strong early intervention program incorporating use of the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) for intensive early intervention with children aged 12 to 48 months. ESDM integrates a relationship-focused play -based, skill attainment-focused developmental model to provide an effective program for young children and their families.
Services we deliver
Lara graduated from The University of Queensland with a Bachelor of Occupational Therapy in 2001. For the past 12 years Lara has worked in private practice providing occupational therapy for children. Prior to this, she spent six years with Queensland Health working in hospitals and community health, in the field of neurological rehabilitation and developmental paediatrics.
Lara loves connecting with children and their caregivers and is particularly interested in early intervention and helping with the practical problems that children often face such as feeding, sleeping and toileting. She has training and experience in the DIR Floortime and Early Start Denver Model for early intervention, as well as in the areas of Paediatric Continence and Toilet Training, Feeding and Mealtime Management (S.O.S. and Sensational Mealtimes approaches), the CO-OP Approach for skill acquisition, Sensory Processing Assessment and Intervention, Social Thinking and Play Skills.
Lara’s work as a Practice Principal at Early Start Australia involves providing leadership to the therapy and support teams and continuing to communicate with and support the families who partner with Early Start Australia for therapy.
Lara lives with her husband Brian, who is also part of the Early Start Australia team, and their three school age children. Before moving to the Gold Coast in 2013, Lara and her family lived in a rural town and were very involved in the outdoor education community.
In 2018, Lara was able to realise a long held vision, creating with her therapy team, an annual outdoor adventure and therapy camp for children. This camp is named Camp Jimbelung, using the word for ‘friend’ in the local Yugambeh dialect.
