Entrepreneurship, innovation and the social determinants of pediatric healthcare.

Transcript

Marsh Naidoo (00:14):

Hi guys. Welcome to the Raising Kellan podcast. My name is Marsh and I blog at raisingkellan.org where we curate resources for parents raising children with developmental delay and or disabilities. As always, remember, the information provided on this podcast is purely informational, so grab their cup of coffee and get ready for some awesome conversation.

Marsh Naidoo (00:45):

Lateasha welcome to the Raising Kellan podcast. We are so honored to have you here with us today. Lateasha Gaither Davis is a pediatric therapist, based out of West Memphis, Arkansas, and she's gonna join us today to tell us about Therapeutic Focus, her innovative pediatric practice. Welcome, Lateasha.

Lateasha Gaiter Davis (01:13):

Hello! Thank you, Marsh for having me. So, yes, I'm an occupational therapist by trade. I created Therapeutic Focus. It's a pediatric therapy clinic located in West Memphis, Arkansas. We provide occupational, physical, and speech therapy services to children with disabilities, but it's a bit unique. The children, they don't just come in house for therapy, but we also go to the children. We provide virtual services as well throughout Arkansas and Tennessee. And we also provide services in multiple schools throughout Memphis or throughout Tennessee and Arkansas.

Marsh Naidoo (01:51):

Leteasha, what got you on the trajectory of becoming a pediatric therapist? What is the motivation that began this whole journey?

Lateasha Gaiter Davis (02:05):

Honestly, it was a two-fold process. I had two big catalysts that really set me on this trajectory of business entrepreneurship and also therapy. So at the age of three, I suffered from a speech delay. I had a difficult time talking. My parents would try to tell me things or ask me things, and honestly, I would attempt to speak and they had no clue what I was saying. And I would get so frustrated, I would just cry. And my grandmother and mom said, This is not normal. Our child needs help. Well, unfortunately, we were living in a small rural town and there were a lack of therapy providers during that time. This was back in the eighties. So my grandmother, she started reaching out to other people asking if they knew of anybody that knew of a speech therapist. And luckily we were able to find a new graduate speech therapist, and it was amazing.

(03:05):

She agreed to take on my case free of charge, so she provided pro bono speech therapy services for years. And guess what? Eventually I was able to overcome my speech delay. So that was the first catalyst. That was at the age of three. The second catalyst or second thing that occurred in my life when I was in the 10th grade, my great-grandmother, she was an independent, vibrant, feisty, older lady, and unfortunately, she suffered from an aneurysm and a stroke at this time. Now, let me tell you, my great-grandmother was very, very feisty. She drove a little two-seater vehicle sports car. She was the feistiest 70-year-old I'd ever met. That was all I knew. So when she had her stroke and her aneurysm, it stripped her of her independence. And I remember being in the 10th grade and hearing the doctor say, Your grandmother, your great-grandmother is going to be a vegetable if we do not seek therapy intervention.

(04:04):

And I just remember her being so independent and then seeing her light in that hospital bed. She couldn't sit up on her own, she couldn't talk, she couldn't feed herself. She couldn't do those basic skills. So fast forward, we put her in rehab therapy and she received assistance from an occupational, physical and speech therapy services providers. And I was just blown away. I always say she became the best one-handed cook that I ever met. She definitely learned how to modify and adapt all those things that therapists traditionally teach their patients. And so that was my second introduction to therapy. And between those two events in my life, that's what made me realize, Hey, this is what I wanna do. I wanna be able to make a difference in other people's lives.

Marsh Naidoo (04:55):

That's an amazing journey and how that spurned you on then become an occupational therapist. Now, how did that evolution happen after college? Did you automatically go to occupational therapy school?

Lateasha Gaiter Davis (05:13):

Yes. So what happened after seeing my great-grandmother I realized I researched colleges and realize that I wanted to stay true to my Arkansas roots. And I graduated from the University of Central Arkansas and I received my degree in occupational therapy. After that, I'm gonna be honest living in a small town, I always assumed that I wanted to be successful. And my idea of success was actually moving outside of my rural town. So I moved as far west as possible, and I moved to San Diego, California. While I was there, I practiced as a therapist. From there, I got a chance to do some traveling therapy, and every time I would come home, I would see people, they would come to me and say, We need some really good sound therapists in our area. There's still this lack of therapy practitioners. Is there anything that you could do to help?

(06:12):

And mind you, I would just come home every three, four months to visit, and I would always tell them, Well, I'm gonna pray for you. I hope that God sends you guys somebody, I didn't realize that I was praying for myself. So fast forward after doing traveling therapy and having several stents, I finally realized after constantly ask, having people ask me, Hey, can you come back and do something about this problem? I realized instead of praying for a solution, how about I become that solution? How about I become that answer? So I decided to leave everything from the West coast, and I packed my bags. I called my parents and I said, Hey, I'm moving home. And they said, Why <laugh>? And I told them, Well, I'm going to open up a pediatric therapy clinic because there's obviously a need in our area, and I'm tired of hearing complaints. I want to actually help alleviate those problems in our area.

Marsh Naidoo (07:13):

Lateasha, that was 10 years ago, right?

Lateasha Gaiter Davis (07:17):

Yes.

Marsh Naidoo (07:17):

Leticia, I'm very interested in learning about therapeutic focus, the services that you are offering, not only to the kids in West Memphis, Arkansas, but how you are expanding beyond that boundary, bringing innovative pediatric practice, as well as engaging your parents. Tell me a little about that, please.

Lateasha Gaiter Davis (07:45):

Yes, of course. So I'm gonna be honest, for the last, I'd say eight years prior to the ten-year mark we were just solely providing therapy services in the schools. We were providing therapy services here within our clinic, but then Covid-19 hit, and that was detrimental to my business because majority of our services are within the schools. And what happened when Covid-19 hit initially, the schools shut down. So with the schools shutting down, we didn't have as many children that we could provide services to. Honestly, we were seeing about 250 kids or clients after everything, I wanna say 23 during the pandemic as how many we actually saw because of lack of accessibility with internet and phone accessibility, iPad usage, things of that nature. And so I sat down and I reevaluated my clinic and therapeutic focus and I said, Okay, this is the problem that we're having.

(08:48):

What can I do so that we can be more effective? Because we realized that a lot of the children could not continue therapy services. It was really amazing. Several of my employees, they decided to call parents and say, Hey, what are your needs? What is it that we can help you with? And as we were guiding them and coaxing them and showing them some things that they can continue to help their children excel in as far as therapy's concerned, since we couldn't do virtual therapy, we realize it's so crazy marsh. We realize that a lot of these children didn't have what I call our basic amenities. They didn't have crayons, they didn't have paper, they didn't have scissors. Anybody that knows occupational therapy, those are our bread and butter tools. Those are the things that we need because we're working on handwriting skills, we're working on cutting skills, we're working on so many skills.

(09:38):

And the fact that we live in West Memphis an area where it's more of a lower socioeconomic area. Our minimal household income is $30,000 a year. So we realize we needed to do something. And so we sat there and we listened to what the parents needed, and we decided to create a support group for these parents. And I know that was a long answer, but we created a support group. That's one thing. And so we meet on a monthly basis, and it's a place for these parents to talk and discuss what their issues are concerning how to properly raise their children. We provide them with tools and techniques on how to assist their children. So that's one of the things that we are doing to remain innovative. We also pivoted, and now we are doing more virtual therapy services throughout the state of Tennessee and the state of Arkansas. So that was another pivot that we encountered.

Marsh Naidoo (10:36):

Kudos to you on that support group Lateasha. Now, so you'll meet once a month. You provide parents with education and empowerment, how best to serve their kids. What are some of the topics that you guys discuss in your support group? Just give us a flavor of what that kind of feels and looks like.

Lateasha Gaiter Davis (10:59):

Okay. Well our support group is completely parent-driven. It is driven by the needs of our customers. Our customers are our parents and our clients. So the last meeting that we had, I learned so much. It was amazing. We had a social worker come in, and we also had a lady that was representative from Arkansas Medicaid because 99.9% of our clients in Arkansas do have Arkansas. They receive Arkansas Medicaid benefits. So we felt it was important to bring a representative from Medicaid and provide them with There were so many questions, so many questions I couldn't answer. And so it was amazing. We learned so much. So that's one of the topics that we've discussed. Oh goodness. We have discussed, Oh, there's so many. Marsh. I'm trying to Another one that we had, we talked about what does occupational, physical and speech therapy services, what does that look like within the school setting? Because a lot of our children do receive therapy services throughout Arkansas and Tennessee. And oftentimes parents, they don't get a chance to have those one-on-one conversations with school-based therapists like they do an outpatient. So that was another thing that we discussed.

Marsh Naidoo (12:20):

I think that's a really interesting point you touched on because you are right, outpatient therapy and school therapy. Yes, it is therapy. However, the functionality and the utility of the therapies are used in two different contexts. Let's talk about that.

Lateasha Gaiter Davis (12:39):

Yeah. So with outpatient therapy, the children that come and receive outpatient services for occupational therapy, we are focusing more on what are those activities? What are those things that are impeding the child's performances within the home? Are they having difficulty with putting on their clothes, dressing, brushing their teeth? Those simple day to day, I shouldn't say simple, but those day-to-day functions that you typically expect the child to be able to perform. For those older children, we may be working on light meal prep, cooking clothing, laundry management. For the older ones that are high school related, maybe we're looking at driving skills, maybe we're looking at applying for a job, balancing a checkbook, those kind of functional skills than with physical therapy. Of course, we're gonna be focusing on maybe community, community things going into to stores and being able to properly negotiate those curves and boundaries and acting appropriately within those kind of community-based settings. That's something that occupational and physical and speech therapy services focus on. But then you look at the school-based performance and you as a therapist, we are looking at what impacts that child's school based performance. If it's handwriting, which we know, we all know that schools are filled with handwriting and using computers. So for an occupational therapist, we're gonna focus on ensuring that they can successfully utilize those tools in the classroom setting.

Marsh Naidoo (14:23):

What is in store for therapeutic focus coming up for the summer and looking towards the year ahead?

Lateasha Gaiter Davis (14:32):

Well, so we are looking forward to 2022. It is going to be a phenomenal year just in 2021, we actually just had our first quarterly meeting with our 16 employees 2021. We hired six new therapists on staff. So we plan to make 2022 even bigger and better. And we wanna beat our six employees that we recently hired, and we wanna be able to hire six plus more employees in 20 22, 2021. We did break ground for our clinic. I've been renting for the last decade, and so 2022, actually the building project has already started. So 2022, we will move into our new home. Super excited. So <laugh> Oh goodness. And are just excited about growing and expanding throughout the state of Tennessee and Arkansas, and not being just localized within the West Memphis area, Memphis, Tennessee area. But we are going to grow and expand our reach so that we can touch more lives. Today, we're touching about 300 children's lives, but we plan on doing so much more.

Marsh Naidoo (15:48):

What I loved about hearing from you last year through social media was a camp that you hosted, which was your first summer camp. Tell more.

Lateasha Gaiter Davis (15:57):

Oh my goodness. So that will be back by popular demand. We did our first summer camp last year. Oh, it was so amazing. The children. It was so beautiful. A lot of times, I feel like just as humans, human nature, sometimes we get tired of the same old, same old. And of course kids, they want children. They want a little bit of diversity with therapy. And so them having the opportunity to come for a summer camp, being able to interact with other children and still work on those occupational, physical, and speech therapy goals was amazing for the children. We had so much fun. They would come every single week. We had a theme, We had a circus theme one day. We had a superhero theme another day. We had a mermaid and mermen theme another day under the street. And we were able to tie everything in with therapy services. And I will remember, I had one parent call me and it just brought so much joy to my heart. She said, Miss Latesha, let me tell you, my daughter looks forward to therapy every single day during the summertime because she loves the summer camp. And she said, Do you know my daughter woke up on Saturday and Sunday and said, Do I go to therapy today?

Marsh Naidoo (17:15):

Oh, honey, that is so good.

Lateasha Gaiter Davis (17:17):

So we're gonna make 2022. We are already excited because we're gonna make our summer camp even bigger and better this year.

Marsh Naidoo (17:26):

Anything that you would like to let the listeners know, Leteasha about therapeutic focus about any of the upcoming programs, anything any notes that you would love to leave us with?

Lateasha Gaiter Davis (17:39):

Yeah, so two things. First, I'd like to tell parents, if you notice that your child is having delays in any areas fine motor, gross motor speech, it is okay to ask for help. It is okay to go to your pediatrician and ask your child's pediatrician, what are those developmental milestones that my child should be meeting? Because oftentimes we may not know, and that's okay. So it's okay to ask for help. And if you do notice those delays, definitely seek the help that your child needs. Always put your child first. And I know it can. Sometimes there is this negative stigma that's associated with therapy, but it is okay. I went through therapy as a child. So I definitely like to encourage and admonish others to provide those services to your child if you notice that they do need help. The other thing, if you would like to follow us, we are on we're all the social media platforms. Our website is www.therapeuticfocus.com, T H E R A P E U T I C F O C U S.com. And you can also follow us. Our Instagram and Facebook handles at therapeuticfocus.com. Please like us, share us. Tag us. Thank you

Marsh Naidoo (19:03):

So much for

Lateasha Gaiter Davis (19:04):

Joining us today. You're very welcome, Marsh. Thank you for having me.

Marsh Naidoo (19:09):

Guys, we have come to the end of yet another podcast. Please give us a subscribe, a rate, and review on your podcast player that would be highly appreciated and follow along with us as we bring you more topics related to raising your child. Lateasha, so proud of the services that you are bringing to West Memphis and beyond. And guys, until we see you all the next time, as always, remember, get to the top of your mountain. This is Marsh Naidoo signing off.