About Us

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Early Start Australia is a national organisation committed to delivering evidence-based early intervention and therapy services to children, young adults and families.

Our dedicated teams of Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapists, Psychologists and Speech Pathologists, work with our clients to help them meet their growth and development goals.

We focus on supporting clients (and their families) to develop language, motor, cognitive, social and emotional skills, and provide therapy supports for children with developmental delay or disability, including autism spectrum disorder.

We are a private provider and offer services from our clinics in all states and territories.

Please note, available services and programs vary between clinics, so please check directly with your local clinic about their therapy services.

Enquire now

1300 372 439

Our vision

A world where all children reach their potential and find their place in a community that respects and values diversity.

Our mission

To deliver evidence-based early intervention and therapy services that support children and families to achieve their dreams and aspirations.

Our values

Early Start Australia is dedicated to improving the lives of children and their families around Australia, embracing the following values:

We’re providing our clients with safe and quality services

As a registered NDIS provider, our staff are required to comply with the NDIS Code of Conduct. This helps us respect and uphold the rights of all participants to safe and quality supports and services.

Click here for more information regarding the NDIS Code of Conduct.

Please click here to view our information sheet.

As a registered NDIS provider, we meet the requirements of the NDIS Worker Screening Check. ESA already has strict processes in place for checking registrations, certifications and screening to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our clients and participants.

Our staff are provided access to up-to-date and evidence-based training to support them to provide safe and quality supports and services.

As part of this, our staff are required to complete the NDIS Worker Orientation Module when they start working with us.

We pride ourselves on delivering exceptional early intervention and therapy services to children and families around Australia.

In order to maintain our quality of service we welcome feedback from you in order to fully understand whether we have ‘got it right’. If you wish to make a complaint, compliment or suggestion about our service, please click the button below and complete our Feedback and Complaints form.

Click here to fill out our feedback form

If you are an NDIS participant, you can also escalate your complaint to the NDIS Commission. For more information about this, click here.

If an incident happens at one of our clinics, we might need to report it to the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. This factsheet has more information about this.

As a registered NDIS provider, we want you to know how we will be able to provide services to you in the event of an emergency or disaster. We have a Business Continuity Plan in place, and this gives our staff guidance about how they can continue to support our clients if there is disruption to services being provided in clinic. You might have already experienced this during the COVID pandemic, when we converted all our appointments to telehealth appointments.

If an ESA clinic is unsafe or inaccessible, services might be suspended; or (more likely) offered with some temporary changes like telehealth, or visiting your home, or by another therapist in another clinic. Depending on the situation, a plan for returning to usual service will be prepared, once we can be sure that this can be done safely.

We are not a crisis or emergency service. If urgent support is required, please call:

Emergency services on 000
Your local GP or hospital
Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14

Expectations

Clients have a right to:

Help plan and decide about services for themselves;
Safe services;
Care and respect;
Timely communication from us;
End this service agreement;
Privacy, unless they have agreed to release information, or unless we have to release information by law;
Tell us if you aren’t happy with our service; and
Have beliefs and cultural needs respected (including an interpreter to sit in on services if needed).

Clients agree to:

Tell us if their NDIS plan changes or if they stop using the NDIS;
Tell us when something might affect their therapy (like medication changes);
Tell us when something else changes (like changes to address or contact details, or custody);
Tell us before they arrange the same therapy service from another provider;
Be polite and respectful (ESA staff will ask people to leave if they are threatening or abusive);
Tell us if there is anything that could be unsafe for any therapist who is visiting their home;
Pay accounts on time;
Contact us to change or cancel an appointment;
Get written consent of everyone before recording anything (videos or sound) in therapy; and

Tell us if anyone else needs to be involved in their therapy (like an advocate or support person).

Our responsibilities

We will:

Tell clients about the services we can provide (and for NDIS clients, those that are NDIA approved);
Work with clients in decisions about services;
Work with a client’s advocate, or supporter, with a client’s permission (an advocate or supporter might help a client make choices and have control over their goals and planning of services);
Listen to clients and try to fix any problems quickly;
Be polite and respectful;
Tell clients about any changes (like a change in therapist);
Give regular invoices and statements of the services delivered (and say if GST applies);
Keep up to date notes about client therapy and protect client privacy;
Help clients to understand this Service Agreement;
Report any harm or abuse, or suspected harm or abuse to the relevant state / territory authorities (if we need to);
Report any Reportable Incidents to the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission (if we need to);
Provide services which follow rules and laws;
Get consent from the client if physical guidance (like hand-over-hand prompting, guidance to support movement, or assessment of oral movements for speech or swallowing) is required to support services for the client;

Work with a positive behaviour support approach to minimise any injury to the client or others, if the client behaves in a way that might cause them (or others) injury (for example hitting, biting, running onto a road).