Before you decide on a Live-ability Service package…
My name is Laury Dean. I raised 3 children with difficult diagnoses [(1) Aspergers w/Cognitive Delay, (2) Severe Bi-polar w/Anger, and (3) Oppositional Defiant Disorder w/Conduct Disorder], as a single parent. They all were too high functioning to qualify for GOVT assistance services (yet not fully functional to be considered ‘normal’) so I became their advocate, OT/PT, counselor, and case worker. I joined Tough Love (TM) back before it changed its name to ‘Love and Logic’. I scoured all the self-improvement programs that were out there, went to seminars, and researched everything I could get my hands on:
*) Bob Proctor “You Were Born Rich”
*) Lynn Grabhorn “Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting”
*) Phil Laut and Andy Fuehl “Wealth without a Job”
*) Joyce Meyer “How to Succeed at Being Yourself”
*) Phillip C. McGraw “Self Matters”
*) Stephen R. Covey/ Sean Covey “7 Habits of Highly Effective People/ Families/ Teens/ Etc.”
*) Phillip c. McGraw / Jay McGraw “Life Strategies/ Life Strategies for Teens”
*) Alan Lakein “How To Get Control of Your Time and Your Life”
*) The Holy Bible
*) and many, many other seminars, videos, books, etc. on self-help, self-empowerment, self-awareness, self-improvement…
What I found was that the Big Guru’s will only take you to a certain point, and withhold the key point for their expensive follow-up trainings.
But I believe in giving you all the tools to work with, So I put all those (as well as the secret key points) into a comprehensive [and complete] self-empowerment workbook, and developed a Behavior Management method.
I was involved with and worked with several Gov’t agencies – Foster Care, Juvenile Courts, Social Security, Housing Assistance, Low-Income assistance, Disability Case Management, and now Guardianship Management. God used my tribulations with these agencies to be a catalyst and enact massive changes in many of them.
Through the years, I furthered my skills by working at Disability and Residential Facilities as a Direct Support Care Professional, and with private clients, and then got College accreditation as a Developmental Disability Specialist [for Life experience] when the College Course was offered (20+ years after I had lived it). Then I went through the other courses for CBT / DBT for the accreditation for Life experience for those skills.
When I realized that the government funding in these Disability Facilities was deliberately structured to keep the Disabled Person in a perpetual Need-State in order to keep the fund level up (the more they improve and need less services- the less funds they qualify for), which put the catch-22 scenario into play. If the person can’t keep the services (and/or funds to afford services) at a stable level to gain a solid foothold on the skills improvements – they eventually backslide. And once the benefits are reduced or cancelled, you have to start all over again with a fresh investigation and new application for benefits and services- which could take years to get services re-established!
(For example: I had one incident where Social Security reduced the monthly Disability benefits amount for one of my children on the claim that implementing an educational teaching module for the determination of task/job values was “providing him assistance” and they needed to be reimbursed – and they did cut his benefits check for almost 2 years until THEY were fully “reimbursed”. I was absolutely GOB-SMACKED! Teaching a math module was forbidden assistance??)
I am always working to improve the situation.
In the meantime, the wait list for Assistance Services in Facilities for those who qualify for IDD services is a 4-10 year wait list.
And not to mention all the people that are High-functioning and don’t even qualify for government assistance, yet still need help with daily activities for independent living skills and executive function assistance.
Early on, when my children were younger, I created 10+ fun/educational teaching games for Learning Disabled students and adults, and a workshop booklet for self empowerment. I ran 3 meetup groups, worked temp job assignments and took the 3rd job, the odd scheduled jobs, and several side gigs, and worked towards an associates degree (2x) before I decided that there has to be a better way. A lot of my time was scheduled with gov’t agency requirements, and for the goal of finding a way to get off of the disability merry-go-round… and I knew that a lot of people were in the same situation.
And I realized that there is MORE of a need than what a small handful of teaching aids would help with.
My workshop/ workbook for the comprehensive self-empowerment system can be used to gain skills for critical-thinking, executive function, personal boundaries, organizational and detailed goal setting/ benchmarking, as well as awareness of mindset, a great new stress-reduction method, and a few other things I added to the mix.
I also wanted to start a business/ consulting service and Independent Living Skills guidance for all people who are not able to get assistance services, and for those who are on a wait list. … I want people to get the help they need today, because Time does not stand still.
So I launched the Live-ability Coaching service. I made it very affordable – I have 4 service tiers for monthly/1-time coaching meetings, evaluations and tracking, and Support for Persons and their Caregivers, as well as guidance, idea generation methods, access to other products/services and a resources website for Live-ability actions (Independent Living Skills) that people can utilize right now, and help prepare for future Work-passion endeavors and improvement of goals that easily become plans of action.
This is a much needed service for the Community.