Springfield

Lara is an Occupational Therapist and began Grow On Children’s Therapy on the Gold Coast in 2013. In 2018, Grow On Children’s Therapy joined Early Start Australia.

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.