In this podcast episode, Mike Carr discusses the importance of finding caregivers who are motivated by helping others rather than just viewing their work as a job. He suggests that colleges, universities, churches, and communities with a giving culture are good places to find such individuals. He also emphasizes the importance of making the work fun and enjoyable in order to retain these individuals.
Transcript
Mike Carr (00:08):
So for this week’s Autism Labs video, I’m going to talk about what’s been our toughest problem, and I think it’s probably everybody’s toughest problem in this space, which is how to solve the staffing challenge, the people challenge. So our son’s 34 and he was diagnosed with autism at 12 months. So we’ve been working on this problem for 33 years, and we have tried probably just about everything I want to go over in this podcast. In this video, three things that I think you might find helpful. One is resetting expectations. The second one is where to find the folks. What have we found the best resources, the best places to go? And then how to keep them once you have them. So resetting expectations, but without settle. So one of the things that I think we’d all agree is you can’t compromise on is trust. You absolutely have to be able to trust the individual, the colleague, the staff with your son or daughter, especially if they can’t talk, if they can’t communicate what’s been going on.
(01:14):
The second one though, however we have settled on, and that’s been a bad decision and that’s reliability or consistency. So we’ve had folks over the years, high schoolers, let’s say in some cases musicians and artists that were just fantastic with our son. They enjoyed working with them. They had fun, he had fun with them, but they didn’t always show up on time. Even though you may feel desperate and that you have to compromise on that, we found that the disruption and the stress and the angst it causes isn’t worth it. So trust and reliability are the two that we just feel are super, super important. The third thing is motivation. And in here I think we have settled and I think it’s okay to settle a little bit. What we have found though is that folks that have a calling, they want to serve, they want to help, and they get charged from that, right?
(02:06):
They find joy from helping others. Man, if you can find somebody like that, they’re motivated for the right reason. It’s not just a job. They actually want to engage with your son or daughter. They actually want to see if they can bring something out of that person. We always are on the lookout for somebody like that. So where do you find folks like this? Where are the places to go? Problem we’ve had with high schoolers is as your son or daughter grows older and our son’s now 34, you can’t really have someone that’s 17 or 18 or 19 working with someone that’s 30, 40 years old, especially if they’ve got to take ’em to the bathroom and shower them and all that. It’s just the dynamic there doesn’t work very well. Churches though have been an interesting place to go to. Sometimes you’ll find older adults there that are caring and giving.
(02:52):
The biggest challenge we found there though is just energy level and endurance. Our son is very active. I’m not saying there aren’t older adults that don’t have high energy. There certainly are, but that has been a problem that we’ve run into with going to some of the churches or communities that we’re part of and trying to find folks that are older and more mature, but they’re not quite up to the endurance that’s required. Here’s a place that absolutely for us has worked out the best are colleges and universities where they have degreed programs that people have already made a conscious choice for a career and we’ve been more successful with grad students than undergrads. But some of the degrees that we’ve found very helpful is special education. If you’ve got somebody with a master’s or working on their master’s and they need some money, a great choice, they’re already sort of looking for opportunities to try out some of the things that they’re learning.
(03:52):
They’ve got training and skills that often benefit our son and the professors, the teachers themselves will help direct students that are more in tune with what you may be needing if you have a relationship with a school already or some teachers that could help funnel the right students to you. That has just been invaluable. So what are the degrees? Special ed, kinesiology, nursing in some cases, speech in some cases, recreation therapy or recreational oriented degrees. Another good one are communities where the culture is about giving. What do I mean by that? Well, one of the places that we found that’s just amazing is crux climbing gyms in Austin, Texas. Climbers as a community are used to helping one another. It’s part of the vibe and the expectation. If somebody’s climbing up the side of a mountain, somebody else has got to be either helping making sure that it’s safe and that they’ve got all their equipment.
(04:51):
Other communities like that, hiking, rafting. Also, a lot of these folks are younger and they have energy, right? They’re outdoors, they’re hiking, they’re rafting, so they have the energy level. Those folks have just been an invaluable resource for us. And then the last thing, the third point is how to keep ’em once you got ’em. And if you’ve got just your own kiddo and that’s all you’re worried about, which is where we were for many years, it’s hard to offer the career advancement and all the other things that they may be looking for. So what did we do? We tried to make it really fun. We tried to get them out of the house and make suggestions, and we had a golf cart for a while and they could drive the golf cart around to the parks and everything. Or maybe have a group activity where there’s maybe somebody else in the neighborhood that has someone similar and that they can get together and socialize and have your son and daughter socialize with someone else that’s maybe a little bit higher functioning.
(05:44):
In some cases, we’ve seen situations where fuera a profoundly autistic or severely autistic individual with someone else that’s maybe more verbal. It’s almost like a sibling relationship, and there’s a bond there that develops. That’s really cool and really exciting. And then for the colleagues, the staff, it’s also fun. They have somebody to talk to, they have somebody to commiserate with. That really is a great way we think, to keep folks excited and engaged and they don’t get burned out, start looking for a job elsewhere. We also try to create a family atmosphere. So if they’re here during the dinner shift, they’re always invited to dinner and we don’t charge ’em anything for that. We just want them to sit down at the table as if they were our son or daughter or just a member of the family with our son, and we have a nice meal just like you would.
(06:31):
And that’s a perk that we offer. But it’s just a way to make them feel part of something that’s different than just a normal job that they get paid for. And that’s it. With respect to pay, we do pay above average. Now, there’s often budgetary and financial constraints there if you don’t pay a little bit above minimum wage. It’s just tough even with people who have the right calling and mindset to get them to stay because they’re just not making enough money to live on. The biggest thing that I think that we’ve done besides what I’ve already talked about, and this is a heavy lift, is you form an organization. We formed a nonprofit. You bring in not just three or four, but half a dozen, a dozen or more folks. You have then a staff that you can offer career advancement, you can offer all kinds of training.
(07:20):
We get them out into the community and into very fun environments like Crux Climbing gym. It’s just a really fun, exciting place to have this kind of a community involved. It’s much better than sitting inside somebody’s house working puzzles all day long. Or we go to an arcade where they get to play games and then they get to go outside and have a picnic and all that. So our parks, right? So this idea that if you can associate yourself with a community or start an organization where there are lots of other like-minded individuals, it’s the best of all worlds and helps you maintain the right culture and everything else. So I hope this helped and we’ll continue talking to you with the next video. See you.
