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Season Two/Episode Eleven: Making Inclusive Childcare Accessible - Breaking Down Barriers for Special Needs Families
20 Plays25 days ago
What if childcare didn't force children to fit a predetermined mold, but instead shaped itself around each child's unique needs and strengths?
Carson Wagner, the founder of Lifetime of Love Nannies, discusses her approach to dismantling the cookie-cutter childcare industry—one personalized care plan at a time. Starting in Nevada and California, this innovative company has cracked the code on truly inclusive care, especially for children with special needs, while pioneering creative use of state funding to make quality care accessible to more families.
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Transcript
Introduction to Guardians of Hope
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Guardians of Hope podcast, where we bring together parents, nonprofits, legal and medical experts dedicated to positively impacting children's lives.
00:00:12
Speaker
I'm your host, Cynthia Ramsaran. The thoughts and opinions of my guests are not necessarily my own. So thank you all for joining and sharing. Welcome everyone.
Meet Carson Wagner
00:00:23
Speaker
Today I'm joined by Carson Wagner, the founder of Lifetime of Love Nannies, a childcare service that's redefining what truly personalized care looks like for families.
00:00:35
Speaker
In a world where childcare often follows standardized one size fits all approaches, Lifetime of Love Nanny stands apart with its commitment to breaking the cookie cutter mold.
00:00:46
Speaker
What began in Nevada and California represents a radical rethinking of how we approach each child's unique needs and potential. Their model just doesn't just accommodate differences, it celebrates them through individualized attention, tailored care plans, and adaptive strategies that recognize each child is inherently unique.
00:01:11
Speaker
Carson, thank you so much for joining us today. Yes, thank you so much for having me, Cynthia. Of course, I can't wait to hear more.
Inspiration and Founding Story
00:01:20
Speaker
So why don't you start by sharing what inspired Lifetime of Love Nannies and how your services have evolved specifically in Nevada and California?
00:01:30
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. I was actually going to college out here in Reno, Nevada, and i just realized a serious need for childcare that was not only but but also accepting to all children of all capabilities. I had a lot of parents come to me and explain that they needed extra support, whether their child had a feeding tube or you name it. They just needed that extra support for a caregiver and someone that could come in and really knew what they were doing and how to support their child's unique
Childcare Needs Across States
00:02:07
Speaker
needs.
00:02:07
Speaker
And that's when I wanted to drop out of college and start that resource to give to the community that holds a special place in my heart. And so I started Life Time of Love Nannies 2019.
00:02:23
Speaker
we have just grown um pretty quickly in the childcare realm and childcare industry, because it's such a huge need and not just in Nevada and California, but really all over Everywhere, you know, there's such a need for good quality childcare, especially to those, like you were saying that have unique needs and just supporting the families as a whole is really what we we try to do and try to do the best at.
00:02:52
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you for sharing that Carson. Now the childcare industry often defaults to standardized approaches for efficiency. What specific practices at Lifetime of Love Nannies most dramatically breaks from this cookie cutter tradition?
00:03:09
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. We are trying to do modern day childcare is what I like to call it. And as we all know, it's very hard to plan out schedules weeks, months, even days in advance, let's be honest.
00:03:23
Speaker
And so with us, we really take a standardized approach of ensuring that the families can come to us, they can explain their needs, they're coming to us and knowing that all of our nannies are 10 tiers screened. And what is really special about nannies in general at our agency is that we're able to really get to know the family's needs and do and provide that one-on-one care that they're looking for.
00:03:49
Speaker
ah You know, we do not have a, hey, you need to utilize 40 hours a week of care. If you need five hours one week and then 40 the next and then zero the next, we can really accommodate that.
00:04:03
Speaker
And then just finding people, if someone comes to us and says, hey, my child has A, B, C, and d we can go out and we can outsource or if we have someone on the team even better for those specific needs and then really train them and have the families train that nanny one-on-one to find the best fit for their household. You know, every child's needs are so different and we want to be able to really celebrate those differences and help not just the child, but the households in a general sense.
00:04:34
Speaker
And I'm sure the families and the parents especially appreciate that, Carson. Yes, I would hope. it's It's a lot of work on our end, but we really do love it. And it's it's just a community that means so much to me. And it's really nice just hearing the stories of, you know, their child was nonverbal and their child's now saying words or, you know, having...
00:04:58
Speaker
different cues that the nannies caught on to and really connecting with that nanny. You know, it's, it's just really a special, you know, a special line of work and a special field. And I would say, in my opinion, one of the most rewarding fields.
00:05:12
Speaker
Absolutely.
State Funding and Accessibility
00:05:13
Speaker
And another thing I wanted to point out, a fascinating aspect of your work is utilizing state funding to make care more accessible. So how do funding mechanisms differ between Nevada and California and what lessons might this offer for expansions to different states with but different funding structures?
00:05:34
Speaker
Yes, I had noticed that there was a lot of access to state funding for the field that we're in and it just wasn't being touched. So when I started my agency, I went to it's called Sierra Regional Center, just any regional center.
00:05:49
Speaker
We went to the regional center to see exactly what we can qualify for as a nanny agency and providing in-home care to children with special needs. And we have a few different resource options, state funding options that are available to us. The first one is respite.
00:06:08
Speaker
And so each family per child gets a certain amount allocated of respite per month. And then we also utilize Palco and that's for ah that's very autism specific.
00:06:21
Speaker
So we do respite in Palco. There's, I think Palco just changed over to Acumen. And so we do document for Nevada and then we do ACE, I think it's called ACE FMS, utilize in California. And I've definitely noticed that the state funding options in California are bit, there's a bit more to choose from in California than there is in Nevada.
00:06:50
Speaker
I hope that Nevada can, you know, catch up to the curve because we really lack resources out here significantly and it's a problem and i just want to make sure that we can you know utilize all of the different state funding options out there and it curves we're definitely looking to expand and one of the things we look out when we're looking to expand to other states is the different state resources that we have access to and then we also have partnered with the special needs community of northern Nevada and
00:07:23
Speaker
They're a great, great nonprofit and we do local date nights to the different families that may not be able to financially afford services out of pocket. And so we try to do a lot of things in the sense of taking that financial burden off of families because that's really the last thing we want them to worry about.
00:07:40
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. That's so wonderful.
Nanny Training for Diverse Needs
00:07:43
Speaker
Carson, now going back to some of the things that you talked about with regard to diverse needs, I wanted to touch upon some of the training that your caregivers receive.
00:07:55
Speaker
So what is there anything specific um that your caregivers receive to so support children with diverse needs? And how do you ensure that they stay up to date um with best practices in inclusive childcare?
00:08:09
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. That's a great question, Cynthia. Thank you. As far as our agency goes, we employ all of our nannies, which means we're able to train them. And that's not typically industry standard within the household staffing industry.
00:08:26
Speaker
And so it was really important to me, knowing that we're caring for newborns all the way up to seniors, that These individuals are trained and they know the best practices as you stated.
00:08:36
Speaker
So we do everything from SID certification, CPR, first aid. We do a background check, including driving record. We do references, and ensure they have valid experience that fits what we're looking for.
00:08:49
Speaker
In addition to our specific training, our recruitment specialist, sure, she's fantastic. She was actually a nanny herself when she first started and one of the best nannies I had ever witnessed. So I had her come over and train everyone else to be as fantastic as she is.
00:09:06
Speaker
um Her name's Abby. And so she will train everyone on the different practices and the standards that we have. We want no matter who walks into our family's homes to have the same, you know, we're taking off our shoes, we're getting on the child's level.
00:09:23
Speaker
What do we do to deescalate behaviors? We really want everyone to be on the same page and have the same general sense of knowledge of what what we offer as an agency and what our standards are.
00:09:36
Speaker
And then in addition to that, we have a lot of teachers that are nannies for us. We have a lot of individuals that are going to college to be nurses. We have a lot of nurses. We have, it's really a wide variety of different backgrounds, diverse backgrounds.
00:09:55
Speaker
such as going to school or their mothers themselves, what have you. And so we really just try to offer as many resources, whether it's online resources, hands-on in-person training, we really try to offer as much training as we can but to nannies, especially when they show an interest. We really want to support them in those interests and get them to be as knowledgeable as possible in those fields.
00:10:20
Speaker
Excellent, Carson. Thank you
Nationwide Expansion Plans
00:10:22
Speaker
for that. i think I have one more question for you. um Looking ahead, what developments do you see on the horizon for inclusive childcare?
00:10:31
Speaker
And how is love a Lifetime of Love Nannies preparing to meet these emerging needs? Yes, absolutely. Inclusive childcare, I could go on and on and on about all of my ideas to shape it in the best way possible that I'm i'm capable of as one person.
00:10:50
Speaker
But i think it really just comes down to educating others and different agency owners and just different businesses in general of what a need there is and how they can offer their agency and their resources to this community that so much needs this support.
00:11:09
Speaker
For us, you know i my goal is to get as much state funding as possible and as many grants as possible for special education in generalized sense.
00:11:21
Speaker
to be able to offer that in-home support in addition to just expanding our services to all 50 states. That's really been a goal of ours and we want to expand as quickly but as safely and reasonably as possible to be able to offer these services to everyone. I mean, we do the most remote locations. we are Our saying is that we will never tell a family no no matter what their needs are or you know what but they're asking as in terms of their child's needs. And it really is a mission to us to be accepting to all children.
00:11:59
Speaker
And that includes really finding the perfect fit no matter how long it takes for that child's specific needs. so Just being able to offer this resource to other states and other communities is really a passion project of ours.
Connect with Lifetime of Love Nannies
00:12:13
Speaker
That's wonderful. I'm looking forward to seeing your organization grow, Carson. It's such a meaningful idea and I'm excited for you and I'm excited for the organization and I'm thrilled to see that kids are getting the care that they need and moms like me are not worrying so much about who's coming in and taking care of their kids so they can take care of other things.
00:12:36
Speaker
um Where can we find out more about your website um or where can we learn more about your organization? Yeah. Our, you can find us at lifetimeoflovenannies.com. Uh, and then also our social media lifetime of love nannies. And then myself, I'm on LinkedIn, Instagram, uh, just Carson Wagner. It's pretty, pretty, uh, simplistic to find and I'm happy to connect.
00:13:01
Speaker
I love, uh, any advice or feedback that any moms or dads have for us of, uh, things we should look into or different ideas we have are constantly looking to grow and be innovative and help this community so any pieces or words of wisdom are much appreciated thank you so much carson thanks for your time today