Changes Part Two

Okay where did I leave off…Oh that’s right, I was working as a lead therapist for the small company. It was perfect. I was going to school and working on my masters. In order to sit for the BCBA exam  I needed to complete 1500 therapy hours and meet with a current BCBA for mentorship at least once every two weeks. The owner of the small company supervised my therapy hours and we met on a regular basis through my two years in grad school. I learned all about doing assessments, writing programs and reports and everything else that comes along with supervising home therapy.

When I graduated in December of 09, I started to help with more things like interviewing new therapists and training them for new and current clients. I would have started to supervise cases in January then but I looked like this.

We decided it was pointless for me to begin supervising cases when I would just be leaving for maternity leave in just over a month. So I pretty much took February off. I was too big to do therapy comfortably and there was not point it start supervision.

So fast forward to June. Oh did I mention that the director of the small company had a baby just 4 weeks after I had Aedan. 4 weeks to the day. Pretty crazy right? Ya, I am pretty sure our clients thought so too. Anyway, in June we both decided it was time to get back to work. I was so fortunate to find a great sitter to watch Aedan while I went to work.

I started off with one client and it was perfect. Aedan only had to go to the sitters house for a few hours each week. It was a great way to ease back into work. In August I started to buckle down and study for my upcoming BCBA exam. During this time we didn’t get any new clients, which worried both of us. Running one case was just not enough. Well looking back, I am not sure how I would have handled doing initial assessments and reports while trying to study and take care of Aedan. And won’t you know, literally the week after I took my exam, we got three calls from potential clients interested in starting services.

In the beginning of November I found out I passed my test. I also found out that the director of the company was thinking about moving back to California. All of her family was there and now that she had a baby, she really wanted to be closer to family, which I completely understood. One of my good friends was finishing up the graduate program and was going to begin supervising with us in January. Again it seemed like everything was lining up perfectly. There were enough cases for two people but not three, so with the director leaving, my friend and I could step in and take on the work load.

Originally we were going to buy the company from the director. But after lots of discussions, we just could not come up with an arrangement that made everyone happy. Plus it is difficult to transfer things like tax id numbers and such that are associated with the company since they are also associated with SSNs.

It was looking like my friend and I would just start up our own company and hopefully the clients would follow. I was nervous. I love love love what I do, but I am not a business person. I never had any desire to help run a company. But I didn’t have a lot of other options. I wasn’t interested in working full time with Aedan so young, and I absolutely love that I have a flexible schedule. So I decided to jump in with both feet. My friend and I were going to be partners and everything was going to work out again.

Well, not quite…stay tuned for part three.

-Lauren-