What's the role?

Our disability support workers visit clients in their homes and out in the community. We cook, clean, organise, help with admin, prompt medications, provide transport, support study, and help people move out of crisis mode and start to thrive.

Our focus is building the relationships, learning who people are and what they need. Anyone can clean a kitchen, or make a meal, or pick someone up from the hospital — we're here to connect with people who have struggled to find good supports, to help them feel safe enough to let us help, to learn how they need things done, and to reduce shame and internalised ableism rather than adding to it.

Do you have the skills and approach we're looking for?

You're local to Adelaide — our clients are spread from Elizabeth to Blackwood.

You build relationships easily, and help people feel safe and respected.

You have initiative and don't need a client to manage or direct you.

You have great domestic skills — cooking, cleaning, light gardening, pet care.

You're comfortable travelling between different homes and environments.

You can be open about your own needs, challenges, ideas, and mistakes.

You can work with a roster that changes week to week.

You genuinely want to be part of a team — to know your colleagues, support them, and be supported by them.

We don't allow clients to abuse staff. But you do need to be able to sit with someone having a rough time — including someone becoming paranoid and accusing you of something you didn't do — without taking it personally.

If that list reads like a lot of emotional work — here's something worth knowing. Most of our staff don't experience the relationship side as a demand. They experience it as a relief.

Being supported to connect and invest is something many were blocked from doing, or had to do quietly in secret, in other settings. If you are looking for a space where it's supported to connect and care, this might be the job you've been looking for.

Is this the right time for you?

When you're thinking about a job, it's not just about your skills, it's also about your capacity. Sometimes incredibly skilled people are simply not in the right place for this to be a good fit. Ideally work is a good part of your life, it creates a sense of purpose and belonging, provides structure, offers access to resources, builds competence and confidence, is intellectually stimulating and offers opportunities to learn. When work is a poor fit or beyond capacity the opposite is true — work adds stress, lowers cope, depletes resources, and creates burnout.

This work asks you to be a steady, reliable presence in someone's life — often someone who has been let down before by people who left. That means you need enough steadiness in your own life to show up consistently.

If you're in the middle of serious stress of your own right now — unstable housing, an unsafe relationship, a complex health situation — this particular job is likely to add strain rather than relieve it. Adding in guilt and frustration that you can't show up for clients the way they need is incredibly unhelpful when you're already struggling.

There may simply be a better season for this work. If you're not sure where you sit, you're welcome to talk it through with us.

People we especially encourage to apply

People with lived experience of disability, caring for loved ones, mental health challenges, neurodivergence, LGBTIQA+ identity, CALD backgrounds, or First Nations folks are especially encouraged to apply. Most of our staff have lived experience of one kind or another and we hugely value this.

What we don't do

We don't turn up and sit on our phones.

We don't just “keep people company”.

We don't work under managers who direct our every move.

We don't focus only on tasks and skip the actual connection.

Will you click well with our approach?

I'm Sarah — a Diversity and Inclusion Specialist with lived experience of disability and of caring for others. I'm AuDHD with a bundle of other things — POTS, fibro, endo, PTSD, etc. Running in-home support teams is one part of my business. You're welcome to google Sarah K Reece and have a look at our website.

We have created a really different model of how we provide our NDIS services. It's relationship based, team based, trauma informed, and draws on lived experience. This is a very small family business. We're tight-knit, deliberately informal, non-clinical, anti-corporate, and we mostly work from our own homes. We stay small on purpose — 15 staff maximum.

We run it as a social enterprise, meaning the focus is to reinvest profits back into the staff, the clients, and the community.

We have a strong team focus and we always have at least two staff on each client's team, so no one — client or worker — is left stranded when someone is sick or away.

We use a range of tech tools, so there's little to no physical paperwork. Mostly we work solo with clients, but we check in with their team online every shift to keep things running smoothly.

Are our clients the right fit for you?

We specialise in supporting people with neurodivergence, trauma, and mental health needs. Our clients often have fluctuating or episodic needs — which is exactly why our roster is flexible.

The people we work with often face challenges in setting up supports: for example, finding the right people is extra hard when clients are gender diverse, experiencing paranoia, struggle with hoarding, or experiencing homelessness.

Sometimes this work is really challenging — a client in crisis, a lot of demands at once. Sometimes it's genuinely dull — cleaning toilets and picking up groceries. The flexible roster can be helpful but also a major strain to not be sure when you'll be working week to week. For the right people, it's some of the most satisfying and meaningful work there is.

Are these supports useful to you?

We believe that for staff to take great care of clients, they need to be feeling well supported themselves. So we invest in our team and expect staff to show up for each other and to let the team help them out. This means we provide things like:

A neurodivergent-affirming, disability-friendly workplace where you don't have to hide who you are

Voluntary mutual aid and working bees

Regular paid one to one catch ups and debriefing when you need it

Regular paid team meetings where you can ask for help, vent, and connect with coworkers

Ease some of the cost burden with things like a monthly phone allowance, access to training and paid certification renewals

Extra administrative support to help you stay on track eg reminders of key dates, booking training for you, and adding important appts to your roster

We do our best to work your roster around your unique preferences and stress profile

Will this pay and hours work for you?

It's casual. Hours vary week to week and aren't guaranteed — that's the trade-off that lets us support clients whose needs rise and fall. When hours are short, we do our best to spread the shortfall across the whole team rather than letting one person lose everything. When there are extra or higher-paid hours, we try to share that demand too.

Many shifts are short, and this work sits at the less lucrative end of the sector by design — we take on the clients and the shifts many providers won't. It's unusual for us to be working the 8+ hour shifts most providers prefer, and we rarely offer overnight support. Most of our shifts are between 2–5 hours.

We are not as well paid as some other agencies. We invest profits into our model to provide really good support to staff and clients, such as our paid team meetings.

Has or prepared to obtain:

NDIS clearance

Working with Children Check

First Aid + CPR

COVID-19 training (free online)

NDIS Orientation Module (free online)

Own car and full license

Registered vehicle with temperature control

Third Party Property or Comprehensive insurance, with your insurer aware you use the vehicle for work at times

Roadside assistance coverage (such as RAA)

Highly regarded:

Lived experience of disability

LGBTIQA+ identity

Experience caring for someone in your personal life

How to apply:

Only applications with both a resume, and a separate cover letter will be considered. Address your cover letter to Sarah, and please include:

Your availability and the suburb you live in

A cool or funny quote you like

Briefly answer the question: if money was no issue, what would you be doing to be helpful in the world? Ie is there a particular cause or charity you'd be helping out? A couple of sentences is fine!

If you want to and feel comfortable, you're also welcome to briefly address

Any particular skills you have relevant to this job

Any disabilities you are familiar with

Whatever experience you have, personally or professionally supporting people

Please don't stress about this! 95% of applicants won't bother, and it helps me weed out the hundreds of people who apply but don't actually want the job. :)

This job will expire on Friday 28th August at midnight, please apply before then to be considered.