Ciara Paramore Email & Phone Number

Albury, New South Wales, Australia

Paediatric Dietitian providing face to face or remote consults to parents of children with nutritional or growth concerns. I am able to support a wide range of issues including faltering growth, tube feeding, weight concern, selective eating, nutrition in disability, allergies, and eating disorders.I am also accepting a small caseload of adult patients who have concerns with their body size or shape and would like to improve their relationship with food and their body, working in a weight-neutral framework. This may include adults with eating disorders, disordered eating and body image concerns.

Islington

I provided clinical dietetic services to four special schools in the Islington borough of London as part of an integrated multidisciplinary team. I worked with children aged 2-18 with complex needs, ranging from neurological disabilities to autism spectrum disorder. I managed a large caseload of enteral feeding patients and specialised in selective eating both in the context of autism and neurotypical children. A significant aspect of this role was the complex social and cultural context of many families we worked with. Working closely with the multidisciplinary team (OTs, SLTs, physios, psychologists, paediatricians, school nursing staff, teachers and other classroom staff) was very important in providing the best possible care for the child. I also gained significant experience in working closely with child protection services.I also maintained a general paediatric clinical caseload of children aged 0-18 addressing issues such as faltering growth, fussy/selective eating, allergies, reflux, delayed introduction to solids, micronutrient deficiencies, etc.I piloted an SOS Feeding Therapy group for neurotypical selective eaters aged 2-4 years, in collaboration with an SOS trained Speech and Language Therapist. We ran five blocks of feeding therapy, with 5-6 children in each block, each lasting 9 weeks. We implemented a rigorous evaluation framework which demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach in expanding accepted food range and reducing parental stress. Subsequent to this I piloted an SOS adaptation for children recently diagnosed with autism, in collaboration with an Occupational Therapist. This was a small group of three children, with a significant amount of time spent on sensory integration prior to gentle and limited food exposure. Once again, the results from this group were excellent both in expanding accepted food range and increasing parental understanding of strategies for improving food acceptance in their children.

Hackney

As one of the Children's Centres Dietitians in Hackney I provide a clinical dietetic service to 0-5 year old children in the community. I primarily see children for fussy eating, underweight and faltering growth, overweight, allergies, reflux, micronutrient deficiencies and advice on introduction to solids. I also advise pregnant women and mothers up until 1 year post-partum.I also engage in health promotion activities in the children's centres, primarily in the form of providing interactive workshops on introducing solid foods to babies. As well as these workshops, I work alongside Health Visitors at their community clinics providing a dietitian drop-in service to ensure greater access to dietetic advice for families and children in the community.Another aspect of the role involves working as part of the multi-agency teams within the children's centre to provide tier 2 child protection and family support. The members of the multi-agency teams work to support vulnerable families experiencing financial, social or health issues that may be impacting the children within the family. Hackney is an extremely diverse borough and this role has further extended my ability to communicate cross-culturally and to provide information to families in an easily accessible form. I regularly work with interpreters in this role.

Darwin, Australia

In this role I was employed full time to provide public health nutrition and clinical dietetic services to three remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory of Australia. I travelled to each community once/month and would work with other members of the multidisciplinary Health Development team (e.g. Child Health Nurse, Remote Midwife, Chronic Disease Nurse, etc) in planning, implementing and evaluating health promotion activities and programs.The public health work primarily involved collaboration with service providers (e.g. childcare centres, schools, playgroups, aged care services, youth centres, etc) to improve the nutritional standards of food provision and build the capacity of staff members in the areas of nutrition knowledge, menu planning, infant feeding, and food safety (among other topics). Another primary aspect of the role was to work closely with the remote store to improve availability of and access to healthy foods and to assist in promoting healthy foods to the community.My clinical work involves facilitating low literacy group education sessions for chronic disease patients (e.g. cardiac rehab, type 2 diabetes, etc) and seeing patients one-on-one for individual dietetic consultations. The dietetic caseload consisted largely of paediatric patients enteral feeds, failure to thrive and iron-deficiency anaemia cases, and also included adult malnutrition, diabetes (type 1 and 2 and gestational) and early stage chronic kidney disease patients.

Sydney, Australia

In this role I was employed full time to coordinate (plan, implement and evaluate) the food security programs of the Red Cross in the state of New South Wales (NSW). This involved coordination of the 'Good Start Breakfast Club' program (a breakfast program in schools) across the 100+ sites where it was running in NSW. My role was to provide program guidance and nutrition expertise to ensure the nutritional integrity of the program. I supervised six regional staff who managed the logisitics of the program in their areas. A major focus of my two years in this role was to transition the program to a more sustainable model through building the capacity of schools to manage the program and gain the support of the community to ensure ongoing sponsorship.In this role I also established a food security program called FOODcents in NSW. This program has a nutrition, cooking and budgeting life skills focus and was aimed at people from low socioeconomic backgrounds. The program is delivered over 10 sessions including theory and cooking. I ran this program in urban areas of Sydney with teenage mothers, Aboriginal women, and young people in juvenile justice centres. This program has since been rolled out more widely across NSW.I was also involved in developing other food security projects for asylum seekers and refugees, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other vulnerable groups.During my time at Red Cross I supervised 12 Nutrition and Dietetics students on placement as part of their course requirements.

Sydney, Australia

Providing assistance with activities of daily living to adults with intellectual (learning) disabilities. Duties include cleaning, personal care, cooking, administration and record keeping as well as involvement in developing long term care plans for clients.

Bachelor Of Nutrition And Dietetics, Honours, Dietetics/Dietitian, First Class Honours

Master Of Creative Arts, Theatre - Stage Management, Distinction

Bachelor Of Creative Arts, Music Performance (Voice), Credit