Household & Estate Staff Training
OUR SERVICE
The people around your child every day deserve better than a generic course
Bespoke neurodivergent training for the household teams who matter most.
What Staff Training Looks Like
Most training for household staff — where it exists at all — is generic. A one-day course. A printed handbook. An online module designed for a classroom, not a private residence.
Luma’s staff training is none of those things. It is built entirely around your child, your home, and the specific people who work within it. The nanny who manages mornings. The governess who oversees schoolwork. The house manager who sets the tone for the whole household. The security team who interact with your child daily without ever having been told what that child actually needs.
We design and deliver training that gives every one of those people the understanding, confidence, and practical tools to support a neurodivergent child well — consistently, across every shift, across every residence.
Why it Matters
A child with autism, ADHD, PDA, or anxiety does not experience support uniformly. What one staff member does intuitively, another may inadvertently undermine. What a therapist recommends on a Thursday may never reach the nanny working the weekend. The household, without a shared framework, becomes inconsistent — and inconsistency is one of the most destabilising things a neurodivergent child can experience.
Staff turnover makes this worse. A new nanny, however experienced, arrives without the specific knowledge your child needs them to have. Without structured onboarding that goes beyond the household manual, they are working from instinct and observation alone — often for weeks before they find their footing.
The right training does not replace good instinct. It gives it a foundation.
How it Works
Every engagement begins with an assessment — a period of observation and conversation in which we learn the child, the household, and the people in it. We do not design training before we understand what we are training for.
From there, we build a bespoke programme that may include:
One-to-one sessions with individual staff members, tailored to their specific role and daily interactions with the child
Group sessions for the full household team, building a shared language and approach
Written household guides for reference — practical, specific, and written to be used, not filed
Onboarding modules for new hires, so that knowledge does not leave with the person who held it
Follow-up sessions as the child’s needs evolve or household circumstances change
What Makes This Different
Most SEN training is designed for schools, nurseries, and care settings. It assumes a professional context with defined roles, institutional support, and colleagues to consult. A private household is none of those things.
We train people who are working largely alone, in an environment where discretion is paramount, where the family is the employer, and where the stakes of getting it wrong are felt immediately and personally. That context shapes everything about how we design and deliver what we do.
Staff training works best when the people being trained are part of a coherent system. If your household has multiple professionals involved — therapists, tutors, educational psychologists — our Coordination service ensures that the framework your staff are trained in is reinforced by everyone else around your child — not just within the household, but across the full professional team.
Who This is For
Nannies and governesses working with neurodivergent children in private residence
House managers overseeing staff teams that include individuals supporting a child with complex needs
Security and household staff who interact with the child regularly and need a basic shared framework
Families onboarding a new member of staff and wanting them to be genuinely prepared from day one
Households experiencing inconsistency across a team and wanting to build a shared approach
Fees
Fees are available on application and scoped individually. Most training engagements include an initial assessment, bespoke programme design, delivery, and written reference materials. Ongoing sessions are available as a retainer.
What The Training Typically Covers
Every programme is built around the specific child, not a generic neurodivergent profile. The topics we cover depend entirely on what that child needs the people around them to understand. Commonly this includes some combination of:
Understanding the child’s specific diagnosis or profile — autism, ADHD, PDA, anxiety, sensory processing differences — in plain, practical terms rather than clinical language
PDA strategies — how Pathological Demand Avoidance presents in daily life, what inadvertently makes it worse, and what approaches create the conditions for cooperation
De-escalation — recognising the early signs of distress in this specific child, and what to do and not do in those moments
Sensory considerations — which environments, sounds, textures, or routines are likely to cause difficulty, and how to adjust the household accordingly
Communication — how this child communicates, what they need from the adults around them, and how to respond in ways that build trust rather than erode it
Routine and consistency — why structure matters for this child, what a good day looks like, and how to maintain it across staff changes and transitions
Boundaries and behaviour — understanding behaviour as communication, and responding in a way that is calm, consistent, and effective
The Impact on Relationships
The difference well-trained staff make is not only felt by the child. When the adults around a neurodivergent child share a common understanding — of how the child communicates, what they find difficult, what helps and what does not — the whole household functions more calmly. Staff feel more confident and less reactive. The principal spends less time mediating misunderstandings. The child builds more stable, trusting relationships with the people around them, which directly affects their behaviour, their wellbeing, and their development.
For staff, this kind of training is often described as one of the most valuable professional experiences they have had — not because it added to their workload, but because it gave them a framework that made their existing work feel more purposeful and less uncertain.
The goal is not to turn a security driver or a housekeeper into an autism professional. It is to give every person who interacts with the child the specific tools, language, and understanding they need to do their job in a way that genuinely supports that child — rather than inadvertently working against them.
Staff Training: Frequently Asked Questions
Do you train staff who are already experienced with children?
Yes — and often this is where the most valuable work happens. Experienced staff frequently have strong instincts but limited specific knowledge of neurodivergence. Our training builds on what they already do well and gives it a more reliable foundation, particularly for conditions like PDA or sensory processing differences where instinctive approaches can inadvertently make things harder.
Can training be delivered across multiple residences?
Yes. We regularly work with families whose households span two or more locations and staff rotations. We design frameworks that travel with the family and train teams in each residence, ensuring a consistent approach regardless of which staff are on duty or which home the child is in.
What if a staff member leaves after training?
Staff turnover is one of the most common and most damaging disruptions for a neurodivergent child. We prepare for it by creating written household guides and onboarding materials that remain with the family, not the individual. When a new hire joins, we provide structured induction training so knowledge is never lost with a departure.
How long does a typical training engagement take?
It varies depending on the size of the team, the complexity of the child’s needs, and how much is already in place. Most initial engagements — assessment, programme design, and delivery — run over four to eight weeks. Ongoing retainer arrangements are available for families who want continued access as circumstances evolve.
Is training delivered in person, online, or both?
Training is delivered in whatever format works best for the household. For most families, an initial in-person session is the most effective starting point — particularly for staff who interact with the child physically and benefit from observing routines and environments directly. Follow-up sessions, refreshers, and onboarding for new staff can then be delivered remotely, which allows us to work around shift patterns, time zones, and multiple residence locations without disruption to the household.
Where a family operates across several countries, we design remote delivery that is just as structured and specific as an in-person session — not a video call with slides, but a properly formatted training experience built around the household’s reality.
How do you work around staff schedules?
We design programmes that fit around shift patterns, days off, and the practical reality of keeping a household running. For larger teams, we run sessions in small groups so that the household is never without cover. For staff in different locations or time zones, we schedule remote sessions at times that work for them, not for us.
Where a new hire joins mid-engagement, we onboard them into the existing framework without requiring the whole team to repeat a session they have already completed. The training is designed to be modular so that it can flex around the household rather than disrupting it.
Other Premium Services
Explore our full range of neurodivergent advisory services.
On-Call Support
Direct access to our team when something arises or during a key transition period — a difficult school meeting, a hard conversation at home, a decision that won’t wait. Available, discreet, and already familiar with your family’s needs.
Coordination of Professionals
Therapists, tutors, occupational therapists, educational psychologists, paediatric specialists. We assemble, brief, and coordinate the team around your child — so the picture is coherent and the household isn’t carrying it alone.
Education Oversight
Independent oversight for students at boarding school or university. School and university liaison, SEN and support plan oversight, regular structured parent updates, and a trusted independent contact for the student.
Navigating Diagnosis
For families approaching, processing, or living with the period after an assessment. Guidance on what a diagnosis does and does not mean, what comes next practically, and how to hold it within the family with honesty and care.
Strategic Advisory
Confidential advisory for schools, family offices, and government bodies designing or reviewing neurodivergent support provision in both public and private settings.
Luma Bespoke
Support shaped entirely around your family’s needs — when the situation doesn’t fit a standard framework, or when you simply want something designed from scratch around your family.
READY TO BEGIN?
Let’s find out how we can support your family
We work with a small number of families at any one time. If you have a question or would like to understand what working with Luma looks like in practice, we are happy to talk it through.