03/18/2024
WHATS THE LINK BETWEEN MY WORK AS AN ONLINE OFFER DIGITAL DOULA, AND BC's CURRENT CRISIS IN SPECIAL NEEDS?
When my lawyer told me in 2016 that I had a valid class action lawsuit against the BC government for what happened to my then 12 year old son with autism in public school, my hopes soared. When she told me the price tag, I swore. Literally, but also figuratively.
After the smoke from my truck-driver language-laden rants cleared, I remembered what my WWII Grandfather told me: "Dont Get Mad. Get Organized." I swore I would generate the money I needed to affect change.
I didn't know how, I only knew WHY - that exhausted families supporting complex kids NEED the stability of appropriate care and homeschool supports simply to manage all the extra things they do simply to have a "normal" day like any other parent, like go to work to pay for all the extras. Crazy as it is, I feel like it should NOT be easier to order pizza to your door than specialized care for your seriously disabled child.
Online, I saw teenagers with gold teeth driving Lamborghinis making 5 and 6 figures a month, and thought - WTF. MONEY FROM THE INTERNET NEEDS TO SUBSIZE ACTUAL SOCIAL NEEDS. But, obviously, I wasn't going to ask a social media influencer to fund childcare required to prevent families like mine from going bankrupt while working full time, or devolving into poor mental health.
I understand all too well from my own personal experiences the tragic ends described in the article that can and do result if I and others like me don't get the urgently needed support we need for our non-verbal, self-injurious/violent kids. The experiences of the families cited in this article ring eerily true to what I went through.
The article also describes BC government's unsolicited "fix" to "improve" the benefit delivery system (read as "bean counters somewhere realized this was all costing too much"), but it was still implemented after every single parents and service provider had ALL told the government over multiple input sessions that what they proposed won't work, and would only cost taxpayers more in the long run.
This government "improvement", which made things worse, had been announced in 2022 literally days after I had arrived at a breakthrough decision about how I could self-fund my merry little troupe of respite and homeschool providers to subsidize costs for parents in my local area using revenue from my emerging online coaching business. It was going to work.
I had just finished the section of my epic journey bent on gaining the personal skills to develop extra online income sources for our team in a way that would help our "brick and mortar" respite care business self-sustainable, WITHOUT government supports.
The arrival of the government's "solution" was therefore sad confirmation that what I had in mind was going to be needed sooner than later. Evidently I was right, because there are now NO supports available for many. In my own son's case, his total care needs were $35k / year when the Autism Funding Unit provided $6k for me to spend as a parent. As described by the article, under the new government the funds were going to go to ZERO. Not only that, to get ANY support meant that someone, somewhere else, further away and who didn't know him would coordinate his care. Right.
So, I was daunted, but even more determined now to continue on my epic journey - because I could immediately see the urgent need to self-subsidize the care and services my son and other kids required using online business. I vowed that people like my son and I would eventually become invulnerable to the whims of government services system, because we would develop our own. Nobody will come to save us, we will need to save ourselves.
But while I felt like there HAD to be another way to support these families, I was a science geek, "just a mom", and despite already being a government paper pusher and administrator, I had ZERO business background. What could I do? I had this crazy idea, but had to do it alone as a side quest to my own 9-5 job. I had to tinker alone experimentally with my new conceptual model of self-subsidy through business (aka social purpose enterprise) because even the best meaning ones seemed unacceptably flawed in many, significant different ways. And frankly, the use of business to fund social welfare programs was a somewhat polarizing topic in the disability community. I needed to stay positive.
I wasn't going to take loans and didn't qualify for non-profit grants.... and I wasn't going to waste energy explaining or fighting with anyone who disagreed with my ideas, or who had contributed financially and wanted to steer the boat. I just wanted to see if I could come up with a solution I could share once built, and didn't want to burden anyone with the cost of that should it fail.
I doubled down my growth and business development efforts, and my little hobbit-feet set off in earnest down a path to becoming a Digital Marketing Agency owner who custom builds business software that online entrepreneurs need, to help them identify and express their skills, gifts and passions in ways they could earn money from.
My own son had taught me that just because he couldn't speak didn't mean he did not have gifts inside him that needed help out, and I believe every human has a gift inside them that can with the right tools and coach can be expressed as an online offer to earn money. It just needs to be done in a way that's natural for them.
I NEVER expected the journey would turn out the way it has so far... but its not over. Yes, major losses, major wins, a lot of learning. Lets just say that if I were Frodo Baggins, and to revolutionize the logistics of complex childcare support delivery was to slay Sauron? Then, right now Samwise Gamgees and I have only just entered the land of Mordor. We're getting there, but the real, dangerous part is only now next up on the horizon. No matter what, my core purpose on this planet remains to revolutionize service delivery logistics for families that support complex kids.
So you're probably wondering.... how, as a coach for online business entrepreneurs, how WILL I translate Digital Doula work into day to day childcare supports for complex kids and exhausted parents?
In a word? Technology.
Part 1 is to launch my CoCreator program (for custom software builds and digital marketing automations for entrepreneurs) this April/May. Part 2 is to establish software mechanisms that will translate digital marketing into reward points that exhausted parents will redeem for qualified childcare providers to physically show up at their door, free. And this year, my team and I are amidst creation of both parts, using the same software technology for each. Then begins the process of rebooting the self-funded complex child supports.
So, if you've read this far, thanks for taking interest and being part of my journey. If you need any help with social media marketing or custom software builds, or want to explore online offers that let you add to your personal income while YOU become a little more naturally YOU and help me design a better way for the 1 in 36 families in USA (1 in 40 in Canada) that support a complex needs child with autism (and prevent massive taxpayer impacts later) - check out my website and book a call for all your tech needs. I'd be honoured to help (and yes, that's the Canadian spelling) :)
Just visit www.naturalentrepreneur.ca - my booking link is in upper right hand corner! An Offer Ecosystem Assessment will help you sort out and advance what you do online, and automate your business to make it more fun again. :)
https://bc.ctvnews.ca/b-c-piloted-a-25m-support-hub-for-special-needs-children-in-a-remote-community-parents-say-they-re-worse-off-than-before-1.6808403?fbclid=IwAR36Vy_raXsqo966GMcIj7jEHJMYiOoaYDVEJlyjZN54dAjrUf7m_Jl2EWs
When the B.C. government announced a new centralized service hub to provide an array of therapies for children with special needs in Prince Rupert and Haida Gwaii, Hannah Davis couldn’t help but feel skeptical.
