Company Description
Private Mentorship is a Vancouver-based private family-assistant service, founded in 2023. We pair one trusted adult - an Assistant - with a family for the long term, in reserved recurring weekly slots. Families keep the same Assistant rather than rotating through staff, and most of our clients have remained with theirs since the company began. Our Assistants deliver education, life skills, personal support and childcare as a single combined service, in family homes across Greater Vancouver and online.
In practice that means individualized guidance, practical assistance and structured support for families seeking greater stability and well-being - organizing schedules, coordinating resources, and connecting families with programs they may not know exist. Assistants work closely with the families they serve to build trust and lasting, positive relationships. Above all the work runs on discretion, empathy and reliability: what happens in a family's home stays there.
Role Description
This is a hybrid role based in Greater Vancouver: most work happens on-site in the family's home, with some sessions and preparation done from your own.Private Mentorship covers four areas - private education, life skills, personal support and childcare. All four are included in every family's contract at no additional cost, but families are not all the same, and in practice each one draws on the mix they need. Your work is shaped by the family you're matched with.
- Private Education - One-to-one lessons against a learning plan that develops with the child. Homework is worked through rather than answered, including re-teaching material the classroom has moved past. ESL at any age. Worksheets and assessments marked with written feedback.
- Life Skills - Practical independence: transit, ordering and paying, budgeting, basic cooking, booking appointments, résumé and first job preparation. Assistants model positive behaviour in a big brother or big sister role.
- Childcare - Newborns through school age: homework, meals, routines, and supervision, woven through the other three areas rather than booked on its own.
- Personal Support - Day-to-day life management: organizing schedules, coordinating appointments, finding and applying to funded programs, government forms and paperwork, groceries and errands, work and volunteer placements, and time out in the community. Practical help around a household happens - a hand with an errand, a lift where it makes sense - but it's incidental to the work, never the work itself.
What this looks like in practice
- Assignments vary considerably between families:One family's contract may be almost entirely private education - the majority of your sessions are one-to-one lessons with their child.
- Another may focus on life skills - sessions spent out in the community, practising independence.
- A combination of education and life skills is common.
- Personal support families are often seniors, adults with disabilities or additional needs, or simply busy households. This work is broader: appointments attended, programs found and applied for, forms and correspondence handled, and getting out into the community.
You are not expected to deliver all four to every family. You are expected to be capable across them, and to take on the mix a given family actually needs - like a traditional assistant with modern day needs.
Example weeks
One family
- Family 1 · Monday 10am–12pm · Wednesday 10am–12pm · Saturday 10am–12pm
- Focus: private education - school subjects, homework and ESL.
Two families
- Family 1 · Monday 10am–12pm · Wednesday 10am–12pm · Saturday 10am–12pm
- Focus: private education.
- Family 2 · Tuesday 4–6pm · Thursday 4–6pm · Friday 10am–12pm
- Focus: education and life skills combined - lessons at home, plus transit and community practice.
Three families
- Family 1 · Monday 10am–12pm · Wednesday 10am–12pm
- Focus: private education.
- Family 2 · Tuesday 4–6pm · Thursday 4–6pm
- Focus: personal support - a senior client. Appointments, programs, advocacy, and time out of the house.
- Family 3 · Friday 10am–12pm · Saturday 10am–12pm
- Focus: childcare - school runs, homework and dinner.
Consistent across every family
Regardless of focus, the role involves keeping clear session notes, following through on agreed actions, and maintaining consistent communication with parents, who are always kept in the loop. Flexibility, a high level of confidentiality, and a client-centred approach are essential throughout.
The role is not a nursing or care-aide position. Medication reminders are permitted; administering medication, needles and dosing decisions are not.
Working arrangement
The weekly schedule is agreed directly with the family at an orientation meeting, along with a fixed homebase from which each session begins. Sessions typically run two to three hours, with a two-hour minimum as the only fixed requirement. Most Assistants work with one to four families concurrently.
Assistants are self-employed independent contractors. You determine your own methods, select which families you accept, retain other work and studies, and may decline or pause engagements. Private Mentorship introduces and matches; the Assistant delivers.
Qualifications
- Canadian high school diploma or equivalent (Minimum)
- 1+ year of teaching experience - preferred
- A degree or diploma in psychology, social work, early childhood education (ECE), nursing (BSN/RN) or a related field - not required, but highly prioritized
- Willing to provide education, life skills, childcare, and personal assistance to families
- Fluent English - speaking and writing
- Demonstrable hard skills you can teach, however acquired - formal qualifications or self-taught
- Strong written and verbal communication
- Strong problem solving and reasoning skills to work with clients
- Must have a laptop or computer
- Standard First Aid and CPR-C, current or willing to certify (in-person sessions only)
- Criminal Record Check with vulnerable sector screening, and MCFD clearance
- Three character references, including one from a previous employer
- Authorization to work in Canada
Assets:
Class 4 or 5 licence with reliable transportation, Food Safe Level 1, a second language, subject-matter expertise.
Private Mentorship hand-selects a small group of Assistants and takes on very few at a time. This is not a high-volume search, and we are not looking to fill our assistant list quickly. All applications are welcome - and if this is the kind of work you genuinely care about, we would like to hear from you.
