Sarah Eagle is AuDHD (autistic and ADHD), and has spent twenty-five years in places where the emotional demand is high and the systems are complicated. Forensic mental health and disability, mental health, youth and community programs, secondary schools and aged care.
She kept seeing the same thing. Good people, doing hard work, being asked to absorb a design problem personally. When they could not absorb it any longer, the response was almost always to look at the person rather than the work.
Much of the work sits between two sides who need each other and are easily misread by each other. Teachers and parents. Mental health services and families. Employers and employees. Sarah works in that gap, so each side hears what the other is actually asking for, and what follows is decided together.
So she built a framework that puts the problem back where it belongs. The Belonging Model explains how poor fit becomes harm, and what to redesign so it stops. It holds two premises. The problem lives in the fit, not the person. And body first, meaning second: what a nervous system is reporting comes before the meaning anyone gives it.
Sarah holds a Bachelor of Psychology with Honours, an Advanced Diploma in Logotherapy and training in Narrative Therapy. She is the creator of the Belonging Model, and is writing a guide for neurodivergent workers, available from November 2026.
She is not a lawyer, not a regulator, and does not diagnose anyone. She works on the design of work.
Based on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, working with organisations across Australia.
Autistic-Led and Values-Driven
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Justice
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Belonging
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Knowledge
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Curiosity
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Kindness
What Working with Sarah Is Like
Sarah explains psychosocial hazards in plain words, and makes it safer for staff and leaders to say how work actually feels. Both matter, because a review nobody will speak into is a review of nothing.
The work is structured. Hazard identification, risk assessment, the hierarchy of controls, and review. It is also relational. Workers, health and safety representatives and neurodivergent staff are consulted, and the leaders who own the design are partners in it.
Whether she is reviewing psychosocial hazards, redesigning a workspace through a sensory review, or training managers in neuro-equal supervision, the aim does not move. Systems and spaces where people can meet role expectations without burning out, masking, or being treated as the problem.
Sarah Eagle in the Media
Recognition
Selected as one of eleven Australians for the inaugural National Future Leaders in Mental Health Project, run by Mental Health Australia and the National Mental Health Commission.
Named Woman of the Year for the Northern Tablelands, New South Wales, in 2014. Local MP Adam Marshall spoke about Walking Feat's Sarah McFarlane-Eagle in Parliament the same year.
Sarah Eagle, 2014 Local Woman of the Year for the Northern Tablelands. Photo: The Armidale Express.
The longer version of how this framework came to exist is the keynote. Read it on the speaking page.
A short connection call is the simplest way to map your context and choose a next step.
