Services
Siana has eighteen years' experience as a paediatric occupational therapist, and is also a parent to two children with hypermobility spectrum disorder and neurodivergence. That lived experience has helped shape the direction of her clinical career — drawing her toward children whose presentations are still poorly understood across the sector, and toward dedicated training in Ehlers-Danlos syndromes so she can recognise hypermobility spectrum disorder and developmental coordination disorder early.
Working with Siana is practical and focused on what actually helps. Her coaching style is built around what a child and family want to do, not around a list of deficits, with a particular interest in adapting tasks and environments rather than solely asking a child to change. She has a strong commitment to evidence-based practice, tracking whether the goals set are actually being met.
Joint instability and connective tissue laxity in HSD and EDS increase the energetic cost of ordinary movement — sitting upright, writing, getting dressed all take more effort than they should. Standard OT reviews often measure whether a task was completed, not what it cost to complete it. Siana maps that cost across a child's day, coaching families toward interventions that adapt the task or environment rather than asking the child to push through. The aim is participation that can be repeated tomorrow, not just today.
DCD makes planning and sequencing movement effortful, even when strength and understanding are intact — a task done once in a quiet room can fall apart in a noisy classroom. It's often read as carelessness or low motivation rather than a motor planning difficulty. Siana distinguishes a skill gap from a capacity problem, and builds scaffolds — visual steps, cognitive strategies, practice sequencing, adapted equipment — around how the child's motor system actually works. The aim is competence that holds up outside the clinic.
A child can attend school, complete the task or hold it together in public, then lose the rest of the day to pain, fatigue, shutdown or distress. Judged only by what got done, that cost is invisible — and easy to mistake for coping. Siana looks at what a day requires, and what it costs afterwards, rather than whether a task was completed. Changes are made to the task or environment first, before more is asked of the child. The aim is a day that can be repeated, not just survived.
For young people in the biio. NDIS pathway, a Functional Capacity assessment with Siana will look at what a child can currently do, what is harder than it should be, and what support meaningfully changes the picture. It is not a verdict on the child or on the family. It is a clinical document — produced by a clinician with the right training, based on direct observation and structured information from the people who know the child best — written so it can be acted on. The assessment is used for school accommodations, NDIS planning, multi-team coordination, and clinical handover. It sits alongside diagnostic work rather than replacing it. A diagnosis can name a condition; the functional capacity assessment describes how that condition is showing up in the actual life of this child, across the actual environments they spend time in.