Bangalore · Autism support at home
Someone who knows the difference between a meltdown and a tantrum.
Predictable routines, sensory awareness and calm handling of meltdowns. We place caregivers for children aged roughly 3 to 16 who hold the routine, watch the door, read the sensory signs early, and keep the therapist’s home practice going on the days you have nothing left.
Reviewed by Sister Mary George, B.Sc Nursing, Care DirectorLast updated August 2026
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Most parents reach this page after a helper has left. She was kind, she lasted a few weeks, and then there was an afternoon she could not handle and she stopped coming. That is a common story in Bangalore, and it is rarely about kindness. Nobody had told her what a meltdown is, what to do with the pressure cooker whistle, or why the schedule on the fridge is the whole job.
An autism support caregiver is a non-clinical helper who has been briefed on your child specifically. She holds the day in the shape your therapist and paediatrician have set. She is not a therapist, she does not assess your child, and she will not tell you what he will be like at twenty. What she gives you is a household that runs to a predictable pattern, and a written record of what sets your child off, which is often the first useful information a family gets after the diagnosis.
Understand the condition
Autism: what families should know.
- 1 in 100 (India)
The INCLEN study of Indian children aged 2 to 9 found roughly 1 in 100 with autism spectrum disorder.
- 1 in 100 (global)
WHO estimates about 1 in 100 children worldwide are autistic. Rates differ between countries mainly because assessment and awareness differ.
- Lifelong
Autism is a lifelong developmental difference. Support changes what a child can manage in a day. It does not make the diagnosis go away, and anyone promising that is lying to you.
This information is for general awareness, not medical advice. Always consult a qualified doctor for diagnosis and treatment. EzyHelpers arranges trained caregivers and nursing support, we work alongside your doctor’s plan, never in place of it.
A day in the house
What she actually does, hour by hour.
Timings shift to fit your child and your school run. The order does not, because the order is what the child is relying on.
- 7.00 am
Wake, and the first card of the day
The caregiver puts the visual schedule up before the child is fully awake, so the first thing he sees is yesterday’s sequence. Toilet, brush, clothes in the same order. Rushing this stretch is what produces a 7.40 am meltdown.
- 8.00 am
Breakfast at the same place setting
Same plate, same chair, same spoon. If the child eats four foods, she serves those four foods and puts anything new beside them, never in place of them. Food refusal is handled as a sensory problem, because that is usually what it is.
- 9.30 am
School run, or the home programme
If the child attends school or a day centre, the caregiver hands over at the gate and brings back what the teacher said. If he is at home, this block is for the occupational therapist’s home practice, split into short sittings rather than one long one.
- 12.30 pm
Lunch, then the quiet hour
Most children come home loaded from the morning. The caregiver keeps the next hour low. Dim room, television off, no visitors, or whatever settles that particular child. Families who skip this hour usually lose the evening.
- 3.30 pm
Speech practice, then play the child actually likes
Ten to fifteen minutes on whatever the speech therapist has set, using the child’s own cards or device. Then his own play, including the repetitive kind. Stimming is left alone unless it is unsafe.
- 5.30 pm
Outside, if the child can manage it that day
A walk around the block, the park at a quiet hour, ten minutes on a swing. With a child who bolts she stays within arm’s reach and knows where the exits are before they go in.
- 7.30 pm
Dinner, bath, and the same six steps to bed
The bedtime sequence stays identical on the caregiver’s nights and on your nights. That agreement is made in week one, and it decides whether sleep improves.
- Overnight
For live-in placements
She sleeps in the room or next to it for children who wake, move around at night or need toileting, and logs what time he woke and what settled him. Your paediatrician can use that log.
What we cover
Care needs & conditions covered.
Conditions covered
- Autism spectrum disorder
- Sensory overload
- Meltdowns
- Non-speaking and minimally speaking
- Bolting and wandering
- Rigid routines
- Food refusal
- Delayed toileting
- Sleep resistance
Care needs we support
- Holding the visual schedule through the whole day, including the inconvenient stretches
- Warning and support at every transition between activities
- Spotting sensory overload early and cutting the input before it tips over
- Line-of-sight supervision for a child who bolts
- Meal routines for a child who eats a very short list of foods
- Toileting support at the child’s current stage, including accidents, without shame
- Carrying over the home practice set by the occupational therapist and speech therapist
- Writing down triggers, meltdowns and what actually helped
- The same bedtime sequence every night, in the same order
Meltdowns
A tantrum is a negotiation. A meltdown is a shutdown.
If you take one thing from this page, take this. Almost every helper who quits does so because she treated the second as if it were the first.
Tantrum
- Has a goal. The child wants the biscuit, the phone, the door opened.
- The child checks whether you are watching.
- It stops when the goal is met, or when it becomes clear it will not be.
- The child stays broadly in control and can be spoken to.
Meltdown
- Has no goal. A nervous system has run out of room and gone over.
- The child is not tracking your reaction and often cannot really see you.
- Giving in changes nothing, because there was nothing being asked for.
- The child has lost control. Reasoning while it lasts makes it last longer.
What a trained caregiver does, in this order
Stop talking
No instructions, no questions, no counting to three, no "use your words". Demands drop to zero. More speech is more input, and input is the problem.
Cut the input
Lights down, television off, mixer and cooker off, other people out of the room. In a joint family this means asking three adults to leave, which is often the hardest part of the job.
Clear the space, not the child
Anything hard, hot or breakable within reach gets moved. The child is not dragged to another room unless the room he is in is dangerous.
Stay close and quiet
Sitting a metre away, angled slightly aside rather than facing him head-on, saying nothing. Presence without demand is what shortens it.
Wait it out
A meltdown has a shape and it comes down on its own. Fifteen to forty minutes is common. Interrupting it in the middle usually restarts the whole thing.
Offer the recovery item he already trusts
The weighted blanket, the same song, water, the dark bedroom, the one soft toy. This is decided in advance with you, not improvised.
Say nothing about it afterwards
No lecture, no consequence, no "why did you do that". He is exhausted, not badly behaved. Food, water and quiet, and the schedule picks up at the next card.
Write it down within the hour
Time, what happened in the twenty minutes before, how long it ran, what ended it. Six weeks of that log usually shows a pattern the family had missed. Hunger at 11. The building lift. One particular relative’s voice. The 4 pm sun on the balcony side.
What she does not do
- Raise her voice, or hold the child down. Physical restraint is not part of this job.
- Bargain, bribe or threaten in the middle of an episode.
- Call you at work for every episode. She calls for an injury, for something well outside his usual pattern, or if she cannot keep him safe.
- Treat the meltdown as something to be won.
One caution. A sudden rise in meltdowns in a child who was steady is worth a doctor’s appointment before it is treated as behaviour. Toothache, constipation, an ear infection and reflux all show up this way in children who cannot report pain. The caregiver’s log is what lets your paediatrician spot that quickly, which is a large part of why we insist she keeps one.
The first two weeks
Your child’s sensory profile is not the one in the book.
Two children with the same diagnosis can need opposite things. One wants deep pressure and spinning all day. The other cannot tolerate a label in his collar.
A caregiver who has worked with autistic children before still knows nothing about yours in week one. Anyone who walks in with a fixed programme on day one is applying a template, and templates are why the last arrangement failed. So the first two weeks are spent watching and writing, while the existing routine is kept exactly as it is.
What she records:
- Sound, which specific ones and at what volume the flinching starts
- Touch, clothing labels, seams, hair washing, being hugged from behind
- Light, tube lights, the balcony at 4 pm, screens after dark
- Food, temperature, texture and colour, which matter more than taste for many children
- Movement, whether he seeks spinning and pressure or avoids both
- Time of day, because the same request lands differently at 9 am and 6 pm
- Transitions, which ones he manages and which ones reliably end badly
At the end of week two we sit with you and turn that into a written plan. Expect the first version to be wrong in places. It gets revised in month two, once she has seen a few bad days as well as good ones.
Bolting and wandering
Most Bangalore flats are not set up for a child who runs.
Wandering is the risk that frightens parents most and gets discussed least. A child who has left the house once will do it again, and usually towards water, traffic or a lift.
The usual weak points are the same in most buildings. A latch the child can reach. Balcony grilles with gaps wide enough for a small body. A main door standing open while the cook comes in. A lift lobby with an unguarded stairwell beside it. A security desk that has no idea this child should never be walking out alone.
- A second latch fitted above the child’s reach on the main door, which most Bangalore flats do not have
- Balcony grille gaps measured, because a child who fits through 15 cm will use it
- A rule for who opens the door when the cook, the maid or a delivery arrives, since that is the moment most children get out
- The lift lobby treated as outside, especially in buildings with an open stairwell beside it
- A card with your number in his pocket, or on a band, for a child who cannot say his address
- A current photo on the caregiver’s phone, and the security desk told what the child looks like
- Arm’s reach near roads, water, lift doors and the gate. No exceptions for short distances
Be clear about the limit here. We advise on latches and grille gaps and we brief the caregiver on door discipline. We do not install anything and we do not certify a flat as safe. Fitting a high latch and closing the balcony gaps is the family’s job, and in most flats it is a small amount of money and one afternoon.
Non-speaking and minimally speaking children
She uses the system your child already has.
Many autistic children stay non-speaking, or use very few words. Being non-speaking says nothing about what a child understands, and caregivers are told that on day one.
- She learns the system the child already uses. Picture cards, an app on a tablet, a handful of signs, pointing, or leading an adult by the wrist.
- She uses it herself. Saying the word and showing the card at the same time, every time, so the card keeps its meaning.
- She waits. Long pauses after a question. Most adults fill the gap in two seconds and answer for the child.
- She does not hold the item back to force a word out of him. That teaches him that asking is unpleasant.
- She does not invent new signs or new cards. A private vocabulary that only she understands is useless the day she leaves.
- She treats behaviour as communication. Pulling at a shirt, going to the door, pushing a plate away are all messages, and she writes down what they turned out to mean.
Building a communication system is the speech therapist’s work. The caregiver keeps that system running during the many hours the therapist is not in your house, and tells the therapist what she saw. If your child has no system yet, that appointment comes before this one.
Your side of it
What the family has to provide for any of this to work.
A caregiver can hold a routine. She cannot create one on her own against a household that runs a different way after 7 pm.
One routine, followed by everyone
Including grandparents, the weekend visitor and the parent who feels guilty at 9 pm. A caregiver holding a schedule that the household breaks every evening will not produce anything worth paying for. This is the part families underestimate.
Access to the therapist’s home programme
Ask the occupational therapist and speech therapist to write down what they want practised at home, and let the caregiver sit in on one session. Most therapists in Bangalore agree when the parent asks. Without this she is guessing, and guessing can undo therapy.
Months, not weeks
Sleep and transitions usually shift first. Toileting, food range and speech take much longer, sometimes years, and some things will not change. If you need a result by next month, this is not the right spend.
One person who decides
When the mother says wait and the grandmother says pick him up, the child pays for it. Name the person whose instruction stands.
The full picture at the enquiry stage
Aggression, self-injury, running, seizures, and any previous placement that ended badly. A caregiver who is surprised in week two leaves in week three, and the child absorbs another change.
Matching
How the match is made, and what happens if it fails.
Consultation call
The diagnosis and who gave it, therapy already running, sensory triggers you already know, whether he bolts, how he communicates, and what the last helper found hard.
Shortlist
Profiles of caregivers with experience relevant to his age and needs, in the languages spoken at home. Language matters more than families expect, because instructions have to be short and identical every time.
Meeting at home
With the child present for part of it. Watch what she does when he ignores her, or walks away mid-sentence. That tells you more than any answer she gives you.
Two weeks of observation
Expect some regression first. A new adult in the house is itself a change, and children who are sensitive to change will show it.
A written plan
At the end of week two, agreed with you, covering the daily schedule, known triggers, the meltdown response and the door rules.
If it is not working, we replace
Tell us early. We would rather move a caregiver in week two than have you tolerate a bad fit for six months out of politeness.
What it costs
The rate, published.
Live-in from ₹30,000/month
That is the live-in rate, one caregiver in the house through the day and staying overnight. Day shifts cost less and are quoted after a consultation, because the hours and the level of supervision differ from one child to the next. We would rather quote a day rate we can hold than publish one and revise it once we know your child bolts.
Therapy fees, school fees, special educator sessions and any equipment sit outside this and are paid directly to those providers. If a family cannot carry both a caregiver and therapy, our honest advice is to protect the therapy first.
The boundary
What this caregiver is not.
EzyHelpers places non-clinical caregivers. The person who comes to your house does not give medication of any kind, including anything prescribed for sleep, seizures or behaviour, and does not give injections or emergency medication. She does not perform therapy. She carries over the exercises and practice a qualified therapist has set, and she stops when the plan runs out rather than improvising the next step.
She does not manage seizures medically, suction, tube-feed or carry out any clinical procedure. She does not diagnose or assess your child, and she does not replace your paediatrician, occupational therapist, speech therapist, behaviour therapist or special educator. She will not tell you whether your child is ready for mainstream school, and she will not run an ABA or any other structured intervention programme on her own.
What she does is work alongside the professionals you have already chosen. She keeps their plan running in the hours they are not there, writes down what happened, and tells you plainly when something is beyond her. If your child needs a nurse, a special educator or a clinical team, we say so and help you find them rather than stretching a caregiver into a role she is not trained for.
Honest expectations
What the caregiver does, and doesn’t.
Clear scope from day one keeps the placement happy on both sides. Here’s exactly what to expect.
Included in care
- Personal care, bathing, grooming, dressing, toilet assistance
- Oral feeding and meal-time support
- Oral medication reminders, on schedule
- Safe walking, transfers and mobility support
- Companionship, conversation and daily engagement
- Light tidying of the care recipient’s room and washroom
- Washing the care recipient’s clothes (machine wash)
- Preparing simple meals for the care recipient
Not included (we arrange specialists instead)
- Injections, IV lines, Ryle’s tube or any clinical procedure (we arrange qualified nurses for these)
- Cooking or housework for the whole family
- Washing the family’s clothes or cleaning the full house
- Heavy massage or physiotherapy (we arrange certified physiotherapists)
- Administering medication beyond reminders without nurse oversight
- Driving or errands outside the agreed care plan
Simple to start
How to book care at home.
- Step 1
Tell us what you need
Call +91-7619629005 or send the form, share the condition, daily routine and your locality.
- Step 2
Get matched within hours
We shortlist verified caregivers suited to the condition, language and shift you need.
- Step 3
Care starts at home
The caregiver is briefed and begins, with quick replacement support if the fit isn’t right.
Related
Where this sits in the rest of our care work.
Autism support is one part of our special needs child care in Bangalore. If your child has a second diagnosis, or you are still working out which support fits, start there. Families whose children have low tone, gait problems or delayed motor milestones usually also want paediatric physiotherapy at home, which is a separate qualified visit rather than something a caregiver provides.
The nearest pages to this one are cerebral palsy child care at home, Down syndrome child care at home and ADHD support at home. Several children need support from more than one of these, and the match is made on the daily needs rather than the label on the report.
If you would rather employ someone directly and want the placement side of this, special needs caregiver placement explains how the hiring, verification and replacement work.
We serve Bangalore city limits, the 560xxx postcodes. Bangalore Rural, including Anekal and the 562xxx belt, is outside our coverage, and we will tell you that on the first call rather than after you have waited a week.
Frequently asked
The questions parents actually ask.
Tell us what the hard hour looks like.
We will match to that.
Describe the meltdowns, the door, the food, the sleep, and what the last helper could not manage. We call back with caregivers who have handled that specific thing, not a general list.