Episode 9: After 22

Kristy: 00:07
Welcome to Unshaken, the podcast where unwavering faith is real life. I’m Kristy, and together with my husband Tony, we dive into authentic conversations, offering biblical insights and sharing stories that inspire resilience, especially for families navigating the unique challenges of disabilities. Join us each week as we explore faith in the family and the journeys that keep us grounded in Christ. Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Let’s stand firm together.

Tony: 00:45
My name is Tony, and I am so excited today because I have two of my great friends with me, Jackie and her husband, who I’ve known for quite a while. They run a wonderful organization called ABG, Angels Bridging Gaps. I’m not going to steal their thunder, I’m going to let them talk about that. But I wanted to uh just frame this because with Unshaken, it’s not just about my story or Kristy’s story. I always want to bring in the people that we know and the people that we love to also share their stories so that we all have a wide range of experiences and stories and things that we can draw on because it’s not just about two people, it’s about a community. This is kind of what what we really wanted to do with Unshaken, and I thought of no better person than Jackie to talk about what she’s doing with Angels Bridging Gaps and all the community partnerships that that she’s made over the years because of her passion, her love for this community. Jackie, thank you so much for for being here. Let’s just get started. Just talk about ABG and talk about how it got started.

Jackie: 01:57
Well, thanks, Tony. We appreciate you allowing me and my husband, Brian, to come on Unshaken. We’re really proud of you too for taking a step in the community and having these kind of real conversations. There’s so many families that are impacted with disabilities, and sometimes people don’t understand the face of disabilities or what our households look like or what it takes to keep a community going. And just to keep a family going, it does take a village. And that’s the approach that my husband and I took before we moved from New York. We have a 20, now 26-year-old son with autism, and we had always worked closely together with school and everything else. But stepping into Brevard County was a totally new territory, and we found out that there weren’t any other resources were definitely lacking. Matter of fact, when we first came, um, one of the things that we did was we went to the pastor of our church at Malabar Baptist and we asked if we could actually start a support group. We started a support group back in 2008 at Malabar Baptist, and then we started doing family days once a month where we would invite families to do horseback riding in the mornings and then bowling in the afternoons.

Brian: 03:02
Well, we did the meetings on Tuesdays.

Jackie: 03:03
And we did Tuesday meetings.

Brian: 03:07
And then we did bowling later that day. So Saturdays was a family day.

Jackie: 03:14
And it just gave families a way to come together. A lot of times people don’t realize that when you have a child with a disability, it it adds in, and not just a child, a family member, anyone with a disability. And that’s what people, again, don’t really truly accept is the fact that any one of us can be disabled at any point in time, whether it’s through a medical situation, a car accident, or just life situations. So the compassion that we have is not just for our own son, but we’ve actually extended it to the community around us because we saw such a huge need in the community, and we kept meeting more families like ours. Truth be told, God woke me up at three o’clock in the morning before we ever left New York and told me that I was going to meet other families like us, and we were supposed to help them. And then he told me, don’t forget about the college students and the high school students. They need internships, they need to figure out what they want to do in their life paths. And I and we’ve done all of that. So Angels Bridging Gaps was born out of the loss of my dad, who passed away from cancer shortly after he went to the church with us and helped us set everything up. And we decided that we weren’t going to focus on what was happening in our lives. Instead, we wanted to pour into our community and helping other people that look like us and that were going through similar experiences. Over the years, we’ve had a wonderful opportunity to connect with so many families through our horseback riding, through the bowling, through our parent meetings, through events we’ve done. And we have been very privileged to meet wonderful community partners along the way. One of our first community partners was Brevard Autism Coalition. I invited Joseph Warner to come to. We hosted a movie screening at Malabar Baptist and we invited families that we had met. And we probably filled up the church with probably over 75 families that came. We had a panel of about 10 guest speakers and different organizations that I had found along the way. And a lot of those community partners are still very involved with us to this day. So we are very glad that we have had such wonderful community support over the years and families that have really stuck with us because the reality is it’s extremely challenging having a child with a disability and managing all of the needs of that person along with resources that are sorely lacking in our communities.

Tony: 05:30
That’s interesting to just identify what those gaps are and how we can work together as a community to start closing those gaps.

Jackie: 05:41
Exactly. Now we came from New York. Brian worked over 20 years working with adults with disabilities, setting up group homes and behavioral homes and cold down homes and all these other opportunities for families to have places and spaces to deal with their children and other young adults when situations are happening. That’s something that we don’t have in Brevard County. We just recently had to go through an incident recently where we had to engage the mayor of Palm Bay on behalf of a family. A young lady was arrested over the weekend, a young lady with autism and bipolar disorder. She has over 47 incidences in Brevard County between circles of care and the police. There’s something broken in the system. If we can’t find and find supports for this young person in our own communities, then we are not doing the best jobs that we can.

Brian: 06:31
Not doing them justice.

Jackie: 06:32
So it’s extremely frustrating when families call me and I don’t know what where to send them to. We don’t have enough behavioral homes in Brevard County. Our kids are usually sent to another county someplace else or the state facility, which seems to be the answer to everything, which is actually the answer to nothing, especially when it comes to the autism community. Some of our kids don’t belong, our kids don’t belong in jail. Our kids have behavioral issues, they have some mental health issues, as a number of people do. But jail isn’t necessarily the best place for them if it isn’t a situation that warrants that. We need places and spaces where our families can gather. I’ve been pushing the city and the county to give us a community space where we can have meetings, where we can have adult programs. Right now I use a space at my church. I use whoever lets me use a space. The funding is sorely lacking. After the age of 22, funding for individuals with disabilities dries up within Brevard County. Once the school district funding dries up, again, adult services are very hard to get. There is a 10 to 15 year wait list through the Agency for Persons with Disabilities, which is one of the state agencies that should help fund services for an adult over the age of 22 when they leave school. Right now there’s the 10 to the 15 year wait list.

Tony: 07:52
That that’s the that’s the biggest gap. And I’m not saying it’s perfect, but there are some resources for kids, I guess, while they’re into while they’re in the school system, but then that gap really does widen and drop off.

Jackie: 08:07
As a matter of fact, if you literally get kicked out of school at the age of 22 on the day of your birthday when you turn 22, in other states like New York, services kick in immediately. So what we do here is our kids don’t have those services in place and families that have to fight for them and go on a wait list, or if not, then they have to be in crisis. And crisis means that you have to have a behavioral issue or become homeless. And that’s the extreme that families have to go to to get help and support for young adults with disabilities. And even if you went to Brevard’s public schools, which this one young lady that I was speaking of did, and we know she graduated with access points in Brevard County Schools, but yet was denied access to services through the agency for persons with disabilities or any other services. So again, the system seems to be failing a lot of our young adults. And my biggest push and my husband’s biggest push is to find out how can we wrap supports around these families. It’s become a social crisis, and that’s the truth. A number of families in Brevard County are probably households that have two individuals or more that receive Social Security benefits or or some kind of Medicaid Medicare benefits. Sometimes both parents. We see a lot of people.

Brian: 09:23
A lot of times it is both parents.

Jackie: 09:25
We have a lot of military families that have retired, or if not, they have been injured as military families, and now they’re receiving military benefits. So there is a there we do have a definite system that does not support enough of that in terms of even public schools. I just went to a meeting. I was lucky enough to be on the Project 10 committee when I first moved here. And it let me understand the underbelly of Brevard County and the homelessness of our school kids that go to school every single day. We have a pretty large population of kids that go to school every single day that are homeless. So that’s just impacts everything else that we’re talking about. It isn’t just disabilities, it isn’t just seniors. We have a community that from zero to a hundred, I’m gonna say, in desperate need of certain resources. I’ve just recently been talking to Aging Matters, and we know they’re losing funding right now when it comes to some of their programs and services and providing food for seniors. Like Meals on Wheels. I understand that one of our programs, Fuel the Dreams, is gonna be one of the hubs that they’re gonna set up for families to actually try to help circumvent some of the loss of resources and services for those families this summer. So this is gonna be a tough summer for a lot of families, but it’s been a tough life for a lot of families as well. So anything we can do to help bring enlightened families with resources and information is a big part of what we do. As a matter of fact, August 2nd, we um reserved the Melbourne Auditorium with a number, and we’re actually putting together a conference called the Helping Hands Conference. It’s gonna be a conference very much to highlight the lack of supports and services that we have in Brevard and to also give our um legislators a chance to talk with us. So we’re gonna have us public, we’re gonna have a speaker that morning, we’re gonna have a town hall meeting where we’re gonna ask legislators and um whoever we can get at that at that table to come talk to us. Let us know what’s happening, how can we work together on a grassroots community level? Like I said, state agencies, government agencies, yes, they’re supposed to be there to help support us, but we need to make sure that we’re doing things on a grassroots level in our local communities to help create the deficits that are happening.

Tony: 11:49
These are, and and that’s I know it’s not all the gaps. I I know that. So talk a little bit about some of the things that you’ve seen that have helped and some of the and some of the steps that we’ve kind of taken to start to close some of these gaps. And I know that we’re not there yet, and we won’t be there for a while, but let’s talk about some of those.

Jackie: 12:11
One of the things that we did this year strategically, we actually um aligned ourselves with other organizations and we started a new organization called the One Voice Coalition. And it’s one voice coalition because we want to bring all the voices together of all the different agencies and organizations that are kind of struggling right now. See if we can put some think tanks together. How can we use what little we do have and what resources there are right now to help support the needs that are in the community? And most importantly, again, putting our voices together to let our legislators and other people know that we are standing together when it comes to a lot of these things. But Brevard County’s been a very unique place, and it’s been it’s a community that there are a lot of caring people here, and I’ve seen that over the years. Um, I’ve seen a school district that worked really well at one point in time, and I’d love to see that happening again where families have confidence in their school district, have camp confidence in their community leaders, that they’re actually there fighting for us and working for us. So I would definitely say that the things that I’ve seen improved over the years or starting to slowly but surely, there was a time when we actually were working extremely well together. And I want to see more of that. I think COVID definitely threw some wrenches in terms of communication and agencies working together, but I’m seeing that pick up again. I’m seeing people that do want to work together. I’m seeing agencies that were saying, What we’re all on this together. I got a call from, like I said, Aging Matters the other day and said, Hey, you know, we could use some support on this, and we have some young adults that are actually attending our senior programs. We actually run the Young Adult ABG Works Enrichment Program, which we started to fill a gap.

Tony: 13:49
So talk about that. Talk about that that internship program that that you started and talk about um, I believe it’s Bose too, that that you also uh that you also started. So talk about those those programs because I think those programs are really cool, and I think it provides some opportunities for for young adults that may not even know that these spaces exist and these careers exist to be able to do something.

Jackie: 14:16
Exactly. And that’s part of what we try to do. Um, when we first started with our church, we had a donation closet, and we used our donation closet as a tool to teach our kids how to, you know, do inventory in the store and store clothing and everything else. We we started a program, it’s called ABG Works, it’s our adult enrichment program. And um, again, Angels Bridging Gaps works. And our whole goal is to help create jobs and opportunities for our young adults with disabilities. And that is another thing that is sorely lacking in our communities are opportunities for our young adults. You know, it’s tough enough that there aren’t isn’t funding for services for them after the age of 22, but then there aren’t job opportunities for them either. So we have a lot of young adults sitting at home feeling very isolated. I tell people all the time the word COVID or or that that isolation feeling of COVID, a lot, the the the whole entire world understands.

Brian: 15:08
You have special needs all the time. You always feel isolated. That’s nothing new.

Jackie: 15:12
COVID for us has existed for forever. And I realized more importantly that um after COVID, then it was harder for young people to come together because once they leave the school district, they don’t know how to reconnect other than out in the community. You’re hoping that someone that looks like you is someplace and you get a chance to talk to them and you can reconnect. So we wounded up starting this program um in 2021. We incorporated Angels Bridging Gaps as a nonprofit, initially was a ministry of our church since 2008. So for the first what 15, 16 years, we ran it as a ministry of our church. 2021, we incorporated as a nonprofit. Um, and then we also started the ABG Works Adult Enrichment Program. And the reason we did we incorporated um we turned uh Angels Bridging Gaps into a nonprofit was so that we could help create funding for scholarships because we know that the there is very little funding for most of the families. Again, that APD wait list is 10 to 15 years. So if a kid gets out of school at age 22, exactly what are they supposed to be doing at home?

Brian: 16:14
You have to deal with that.

Jackie: 16:16
So we have a lot of behavioral issues that are happening too. So my thing is give these young people a place and a space and make them feel connected to the community and feel useful to the community around them.

Brian: 16:27
Give them purpose, give them somewhere to go, something to do, keep them active, involved, and you know, at the same time, you give the parents they get a chance to break too. Yeah, to get you actually do something with your child, you know.

Jackie: 16:40
And we we have an open door policy where we invite caregivers to participate in what we’re doing. Um, we actually have a blast both with our young adults and with our caregivers. So within that vein, we started a couple of projects. One is our Bose Boutique, it’s our Angels Bridging Gaps boutique, thrift and consignment boutique on wheels. Um, one of my partners, Phil, that helps support us in the organization. He came up with the term. He’s always got interesting terms, but Bose is what we call it. So it’s our pop-up boutique on wheels. When we lost our space at our church for our donation closet, which we were just giving clothing away to the community. And that’s something else that’s important to me too, to make sure that our young adults understand that it’s not just about taking in this community, it’s about giving back. So our program very much encompasses them giving back and them feeling a part of that process too. It’s important for the human psyche to feel that we’re part of something and to feel that we can be capable of giving and capable of participating, being a functional part of the community around us. So we actually have the Bose Boutique Program, which is one. We recently um partnered with and I recently joined the board of the University of Florida’s extension program, and we started a program with them called Roots to Work, which we’re trying to get them a master’s gardener license. And then the hope and goal is for them to be able to even have a certification where they could work in a nursery. And then in the meantime, we’re actually working with a couple of local organizations to construct community gardens. So and that’s awesome. That’s fantastic.

Brian: 18:10
In the community.

Jackie: 18:11
And then we’re working with the chef. We just had our cooking program today. Um, so our goal is to take the items that we’re making and actually that we actually uh create in our community garden and maybe do some cottage uh some some uh some cottage uh items that we can actually sell at a farmer’s market. We have another part of our program which we call um our entrepreneurialship program, which we’re teaching young adults how to create their small little micro businesses. My thing is most of these kids probably will never have full-time jobs because unfortunately the community around us doesn’t support that. But if we can give them the opportunity to create their own small micro businesses, they will always have something that’s theirs and a sense of purpose that they can, you know, also make a little and make a little money and a skill. So we try to really encompass that. One of we this past year, we um were able to utilize vocational rehabilitation and we set up some on-the-job opportunities for our young adults, some OJTs, and we actually had a couple of paid OJTs the past year or two. So that’s something else that we encourage in our program too, creating jobs and opportunities for them. And then our angel buddies program that’s our young adults with disabilities. I’m sorry, that is our high school and college students, and they have an interest or of they may be the brother or sister of a person with a disability or just an interest in disabilities. We started at Heritage High School the year my daughter graduated in 2022, and we went in and we did a day in the life of a person with a disability within a couple of their different classes. We met with several students, we met with over 70 students that day, um, and we had different processions with them. And I and I brought in seven of our community partners to tell them about their jobs and opportunities in the field of disabilities. Um, we give them opportunities to volunteer at different events and get their community service hours. And then we also give them the opportunity to shadow with some of our community partners to see if they’d like to go into a particular field. We’ve actually successfully had two of our young people that actually participated in our shadowing job opportunities. We come, one became an occupational therapist and the other one is a behavior therapist right now. So we’ve watched um some of the students actually successfully make it through and navigate. We’ve got a couple of young people right now that are looking to do the same. And whenever we get those opportunities, we definitely encourage young people too. There’s opportunities in the field of disabilities and job opportunities, is what I’m talking about. Because that’s a huge need right now as well. Even if we got the full funding from the state, the lack of resource partners available to fill the needs is also lacking, too.

Tony: 20:46
And that’s so important because and and I love I love this the the story behind ABG because it starts it starts from a faith perspective. And you guys, I love the fact that you you guys started this as a ministry, but but it’s also you’ve also built in um the resilience piece because you guys have have built in just mechanisms to where all of our young people are able to actually do something and not just sit at home and and be isolated, because that can be extremely you know detrimental to your emotional health. And then I just love the the family aspect of it because now you are like you said, you’re inviting you know, mom and dad, you’re inviting the siblings.

Jackie: 21:34
Our motto is it takes a village filled of love, hope, faith, joy, and then it says, each one teach one. And what that all means is that’s what’s gotten our families through life. Faith is first, and then we put that in our marriage. We’ve been married 31 years this year, and that’s another Congratulations. Thank you very much, and I still like him very much.

Brian: 21:55
Thank you.

Jackie: 21:56
And I but the truth of the matter is you enter a child with a disability, the statistic. A marriage or divorce go from 50 or 60% up to about 80 or 85%. So that’s another thing. We’re extremely proud to have a number of families that still interact with us. And I think it does matter having other or other families and other people that are living it also and struggling through it and having other people to talk to. That’s why we started all of this, just so no one ever feels alone. It was just important to us, most importantly, to think for me, I I think of church as being a space that I know to be my solace. I hope that it’s a place and I know it to be a place too that that my my son felt extremely accepted. That was the reason we stayed at Malabar Baptist. They sang off key. They were a little tiny church. It wasn’t a custom church that I was accustomed to go into. But you know what? They were the sweetest bunch of people and they cared. And most importantly, I could see that if my eyes closed tomorrow, they would still say, Hey, Omari, are you okay? And for me, that means the world. So for me, church is not just about um, you know, it’s it’s about the gospel and everything else, but it’s also a community of people that that are that believe the same things and hopefully a family community is what you build. And that’s what I’m hoping to continue building in all of this. And my husband and I, in terms of Angels Bridging Gaps and ABG works, and we call it our village. We believe that it’s a village of support. We love um a number of the organizations we work with, and we want to continue seeing these organizations succeed because without these organ other organizations succeeding, then the future is bleak for other families. I want to see twice as much. I tell families all the time, the ones that have the twos and the three-year-olds, I said, by the time your son gets to be my age, we will have this county on lockdown where we know exactly where resources are, we have the right housing for them, we have the right benefits for them. We know that by the time they leave school, that we can sit down with them. In New York, when kids leave school, they sit down with a team, they know where they’re going. And I think that also helps with the psyche as well. What’s happening to me next? Um, I see a lot of kids go through a mental struggle. I see, I think my son went through it as well during that last year of school. When you’re leaving school, you’re leaving blast, and you have no idea what your what the future holds or if you’ll ever see your friends again, because you can’t control anything around you as being a young person with a disability. You’re very dependent on your caregivers. In Brevard County, transportation is near and none as far as non-existence, you know. So my husband and I were just talking about the lack of transportation and buses going down certain streets. How do you get along around as a young person with a disability?

Brian: 24:35
Well, this word out, right?

Jackie: 24:37
So, like I said, it’s extremely challenging for them and it’s challenging for caregivers. So, as caregivers, we completely understand and we we relate um as community partners. We understand the struggles that are there too in terms of the uh financial restraints that we are at all have to provide services. So, my thing is we need to come together as a community to have these think tanks and keep talking about it. And hopefully we can come up with solutions and answers.

Tony: 25:04
When you’re talking about like the community partners, talk about the uh the importance of that representation, both in in like our government spaces, you know, that I that I know that we’re working really hard on to get the you know the right legislation and and and just just the proper representation in that and also in in just our communities in general and in our workspaces. Talk about those things that you’ve seen and and the gaps, but also the the victories that we’ve seen and the and the steps that we that we’ve seen lately.

Jackie: 25:41
One of the things that we in our One Voice Coalition, and the reason we came together, it’s One Voice Coalition is um is made up of Angels Bridge and Gaps, the Brevard Autism Coalition, and our partner Nicole, who has started the Brevard um One Voice, um One Voice Brevard newsletter. And she takes more of a legislative stance because she actually was in one of the uh partners in policymaking classes, and she has been a wonderful addition to our little team because it’s important that we understand the legislation. The decisions that affect our everyday lives are not the ones that are made in in the federal government on that level. It’s the stuff that happens right here in Brevard County, the things that to get to know your local administrators, to get to know your local officials. That’s extremely important. They’re the ones that touch our lives every single day. It’s important that we get out for those general, though those general elections, the ones that really do affect our everyday paths. Um, and what we’ve been doing is working strategically with our legislators. Back in November, our One Voice Coalition, we actually had a candidate forum. So we invited all the candidates, both Democrats and Republicans. We want to get to know everybody. Because at the end of the day, I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or what you are. What I do care about people. I care about our community with disabilities. I care about the people that can’t take care of themselves at a point in time where there’s a shortage of food, there’s a shortage of jobs, there’s a shortage of so many other things, and communities aren’t wrapping themselves around them. That’s what I care about. I care about legislators that promise certain things, but then get to the other side and then don’t deliver. I’m concerned about that there’s funding deficits that are happening and that we have families that are literally terrified that they may lose their Medicaid or their Medicare. Um, I just had a partner just send out an email today, which I didn’t get a chance to look at yet, related to vocation rehabilitation in one of the agencies that may also be in jeopardy. Um, we have a number of these agencies, again, that have been the fabric of holding things together, not perfectly. Don’t get me wrong. Do these things need change? Oh, 100%. We need to sit down, but we need to make sure we do it strategically so that people’s everyday lives are not affected. That’s my concern. And making sure that we’re doing that in the best possible way, where human dignity and human lives matter more than financial gain.

Tony: 28:05
And that’s so important. As you make progress, we need to be having sort of that ongoing conversation so that things stay aligned and we know we know where we’re going. Because you can have conversations, but if there’s nothing to draw on at the end of it, all you’ve done is just had a meeting. You didn’t you didn’t do anything.

Jackie: 28:28
And funny enough, I’ve seen a lot of that over the years. You know, I got a chance to talk to some of my pioneer women that have started and pioneer families that started a lot of different organizations in Brevard County. And just recently we lost Terry Tamaka. Um, she was one of the big advocates for IEPs and helping families all these years. She started Family Liaison Project with her team. Prior to her passing away, we had just talked and we talked about how over the past few years, I’ve known these people in this community probably 18, almost 20 years. So we’ve kind of grown up together in some ways, and I admired a lot of them and things that they had accomplished. And we were talking about how we have gotten to a point where we feel like we hit a wall and we didn’t get any further, and there’s still not enough done. And for those, each of the women that I speak of, they have to they have children with disabilities themselves that are now adults.

Brian: 29:21
Yeah.

Jackie: 29:21
And we’re like, wow, we’ve worked all these years, but we still haven’t finished it. So the job’s not done. There’s work that needs to be done. We need parents to get involved. We need people to care enough to open their mouth, speak out, open their hearts, and open their minds, and realize that there’s something out there beyond you. And if God has not taught us anything else, you know, is to love your brother and sister. That’s all we’re asking. Think of others and be willing to, you know, be compassionate.

Tony: 29:50
It’s it’s interesting that you that you talk about like the school system and IEPs, um, because that’s something that we are going to be uh talking about in the future. We’re gonna talk about navigating how to navigate that, because so many parents, uh, you know, the the phrase IEP is so new, you know, and sometimes it’s kind of thrust on you, and you’re like, okay, what is this? And you don’t know, you don’t know how to advocate for your child, you don’t know what all the terms are.

Jackie: 30:22
The worst feeling is your first IEP meeting. I remember me and Brian showing up to our very first IEP meeting in New York with Omari. And the first thing they said was, Two of you didn’t have to come. We only usually see one parent. And I looked at them and said, We both are parents. If something happens to me, he needs to know. If something happens to him, I need to know. We work as a team, so I don’t know. So that was actually very shocking. And actually, as the years went on and Brian would keep showing up with me, it they said, Wow, we don’t see dads show up to IEP meetings, which I was like kind of shocked to find out. And it is the most intimidating meeting you could possibly ever have. They looked at us and said, So what do you want? And I said, I don’t know. What are you a magician? Can you make my son talk? I don’t know, what can you do? What am I supposed to be asking for?

Tony: 31:08
And and that’s and that’s such a I mean, a funny story, but also that’s such a it’s a sad story too, because we don’t know. We don’t know what’s out there, and and we don’t, um, there’s there’s so many parents that that do get overwhelmed and they do get, okay, so I’ve got all this stuff, but what do I do?

Jackie: 31:29
And that’s the key thing, and that’s the part I try to help community partners understand. I’ve sat in a lot of meetings with wonderful community partners that want to help, but they have no idea what it’s like until you sit in my shoes and you’re the caregiver and understand when all this stuff is coming at you that it feels overwhelming, that it actually makes you feel immobile. I have families that I’ve been saying for years, have you applied for APD yet? Have you applied? They’re like, no, I started the application. And the funny part was when I had to do my application, I can’t lie. I froze two at one point in time, and I actually know some stuff. So it feels a little intimidating. It’s extremely overwhelming. It feels like you’re always fighting all the time. You’re either calling a doctor and you’re fighting for services on that end, you’re fighting the school for services. And then when you finally get to the end of the race, which is now they’re an adult and you’re like, okay, school’s done. And it’s like, now what? So now you’re fighting them in the house because now they’re in the house with you and you can’t get out of the house. And now you have like this powder cake that’s happening. You can’t work. So it’s it’s a it’s just it’s a struggle, not just for our our individuals, but also the caregivers.

Brian: 32:35
Yeah.

Jackie: 32:35
I recent um a couple, was it maybe a year or two ago, I heard something on the news and they were talking about getting more supports for caregivers that had people with dementia. And I remember thinking, what about our care? What about caregivers for life? Right? When you have a child in Little or a family member for your entire life that you’re taking care of. You know, it’s there’s never a break. And that’s the thing I’m really concerned about too. And one of the reasons I’m really pushing for respite cool down homes, caregivers need to have a break. The kids need a break from us sometimes. The biggest issue that we have right now, again, is parents don’t know who to call when they’re having behavioral issues. So we call the police. We need another number, it should not be police that we are calling. And I know that Brevard Cares has their mobile response team, but we only have one for all of Brevard County.

Brian: 33:26
Yes, that and they burnt out.

Jackie: 33:29
But if we had, we need to have a specialized number to deal with especially behavioral issues that are not life-threatening issues that require the police, right? I have police friends that are getting called into things, and it’s not fair to them either. You know, we’ve got situations where we need more caregiver trainings, we need police trainings, we need them to work together. I’ve been working really hard to try to pull all of that together. I just found out that the University of Florida, the same program that I’m working with, just created something that I think is because I was talking to them about the need for interactions with police and with families. And we actually had um a program we started this past year that, again, you have helped me with. And it’s um they have a health and safety rocks program. I wanted to add on an element to it. We actually had first responders and police officers come and visit with us and get to know our kids and know our families and tell us about services that they can offer a program that they had and leave that as an open door communication on an ongoing basis. But we got denied. But I just saw that something just started happening again with UF. So I’m hoping that we can piggyback because you know I’m about to call, right? You know, I’m not done.

Tony: 34:40
That’s just really funny because that’s that’s one of the things. So, with all the work that I that I do with All Abilities, and you’ve been a big part of that as well. When we started, when we started to do events and we started to have the the medical team there from Coastal, one of the things that I talked to them about was, hey, would you guys mind opening up your your van or your ambulance? Whatever you bring with you, would you open that up during our events so that the kids could get used to seeing you guys? You and you know, you guys could like be interacting with them and talking with them. And because so many times our our kids and our adults, whenever they’re dealing with medical personnel, it’s usually for a bad reason. They’re usually like they’re in the hospital, they’re they’re getting surgery, they’re they have some sort of medical exam or or or some procedure that’s happening, and it’s usually not pleasant, it’s usually not fun. So at our events, you know, you know, during some downtime or in in the beginning or at the end, you know, just open it up so that this way they can see you guys as as helpful people and not people that they need that they need to be afraid of. And so, you know, that that’s been something that uh that I’ve seen, and I’m sure you’ve seen it too, where like when they when they’ve been open to those things, whether it’s whether it’s an ambulance or a police car or a fire truck or something where where the kids are able to interact with those vehicles.

Jackie: 36:13
It brings their anxiety down. Now, a couple of years ago, matter of fact, in the in the heat of COVID, we actually had an online event that we had done, and I got all first responders. It was a first responder event. I got um Project Lifesaver. If parents don’t know about that, that’s what the police sheriff’s department um you can call, and it’s an arm band or a wristband that you can put for a child that’s an eloper or an adult that is also an eloper, too. Um, the police department can help pay for that. If you have a financial hardship, you just need to ask. It’s a wonderful program. And it can extend beyond Boulevard County, which is good. So if you’re going to Disney or someplace like that, they can also find the child. The child is an eloper. Then one of the things that I did though, uh there’s also with the wallet card with the Palm Bay Police Department, the chance card with the Sheriff’s Department here in Brevard County. And then what I did strategically was I invited the fire department to participate in our first responders. And they actually said they were very happy to get the invite. It’s the first time they’ve gotten an invite to that kind of an event. They usually get left out of it for some reason. But they are actually, you got to remember, first fire department is also our EMT. They are the first time it’s seen. And I’ve had fire department tell me that they’ve had situations where a caregiver of a person with a disability refused care because they didn’t want to leave the child by themselves or they didn’t have someone else and they didn’t know how to handle the situation. So we need to make sure that we’re including all first responders, anyone that touches our families to know how to deal with our kids and deal with behaviors or whatever’s happening, especially in a crisis situation. When we first moved here, I was told that we had to register our alarm. So when I went to the precinct to register our alarm, I told them to please go ahead and register our son. So they wanted to, they said, register your son. I said, Yes, I have a at the time he was six, a six-year-old son with low verbal autism. And I would like you to know and make a note to my house that if there’s ever a fire or some kind of emergency, we I winded up letting the police officers, um, asking them at the police present if they could actually include my son in that notice. Because if there was ever an emergency at the house, I would want them to know that a child with a disability is here and he may respond in a certain way, and that’s extremely important.

Brian: 38:31
Well, he might not respond at all.

Jackie: 38:33
So at the time there was no wallet card, there was no chance card. This is back in 2006. They thought I was a crazy person at the precinct. Bringing it up, bringing it up. But I got news, they put a note on my red on my file. So years later, I’m glad to hear there are programs like the chance card and the wallet card, but a lot of families don’t know about them. And there isn’t a good system yet in Brevard County where all the different departments talk to each other. They don’t. So that would be something else that would be extremely helpful. So I’m hoping that we can actually have those conversations with law enforcement. Um, August 2nd, that town hall meeting, we’re inviting all law enforcement city, city managers, we’re gonna invite them too. We want to know where the issues are, we want to have conversations about it. And it’s not about yelling and screaming or being um mad about what isn’t. I don’t want to waste time and energy. The question is what can we do now to make it better on the solutions?

Tony: 39:25
And that’s awesome because I think I think those conversations are gonna be they’re gonna be helpful and they’re also going to um just start the ball rolling because I think I think a lot of times the the progress stops because the conversations stop. And so having those conversations is is going to be um is going to be important at at the event like your um that you’re setting up on August 2nd. What are what are some of the things um in your years of doing ABG, what are some of the things that you’ve seen that have brought you hope from like where you started when you first got to Brevard to like where you are today? Like what are some of the like milestones or kind of the the the big things that kind of bring you guys hope as you you know keep working as hard as you guys are um in this space?

Jackie: 40:20
I think the thing that keeps us the most motivated are it’s the kids that we work with. That’s the truth. I watch them get older, and it breaks my heart that they don’t have more opportunities, that I don’t have a path 100% for them, that I’m watching caregivers pass away. And I know how much we worry about our own son. And we’ve known a lot of these caregivers for over 20 years. These are families we’ve known for a long time. We’ve chosen to stay here in Brevard County, regardless of the fact that it’s not the easiest place to be, per se, in terms of resources and services. But I’ve also watched a very caring community as well, and I’ve met some wonderful, wonderful. And you, you’re one of our community partners. And it’s working with people like you and working with the Autism Coalition and Soaks Support Group and Parker Foundation and all the families that have come together to start organizations like us. And a lot of the organizations in Brevard are started by families, they’re starting by people that you know what, we figured it we didn’t like what we saw, we didn’t see enough of it, and we started something, and that’s what we need to continue doing that. So I will continue being hopeful because I I think that’s who we are in general. That’s why the organization again, love, hope, faith, and joy kind of what we do.

Tony: 41:34
So and I love that. And and and I mean you’re you’re right in the sense of like that’s kind of why we started Unshaken, because we we saw we saw a space where there’s one that has a physical disability and there’s one that doesn’t. And and not that we’re the only couple like this, but there are not many couples that are talking about it. You know, that they’re not they’re not talking, they’re not having those conversations. Um, so being able being able to do that and being able to have those conversations um is one of the reasons why we do that. And so I’m so appreciative of you guys. Love hanging out with you guys every time we do one of our Bible studies or something, you know, at the Field of Dreams. Uh, Brian, you’re you always bring out so much energy and and and you’re always uh so good with our kids. And so just love the energy that both of you bring to this. Um, let me pray for ABG and for you guys as a family, and uh, and we will wrap this up. And again, I’m just so thankful for you guys. Um, so thankful for for the work that you guys are doing. Um so let me just pray for us real quick, Father. We just do come to you. Just so thankful. Number one, just for your grace, um, and that you love us and that you give us the gifts that that we need uh to be able to impact your kingdom. Father, so thankful for Jackie and for Brian Um and the work that they’re doing with ABG. Father, I just pray that that you would bless their family. Father, just uh just wrap your loving arms around them, and Omari, um, and just just be with them, give them strength, give them hope, give them the resources that they need to continue uh this important work with ABG and with all the different community partners that that they do work with. Father, help to continue to open doors uh to where we can continue to work with them and also um just the other community partners can come alongside us as well and and be able to be a part of a really successful day, um, hopefully coming up on August 2nd uh with this conference. And so, Father, again, uh I just thank you so much um for the blessing that these two have been in my life and uh and for Kristy as well. And so uh again, Father, just thank you so much uh for your son and just for everything that he’s done for us. We love you. Father, um, and we thank you uh so much for everything that you do for us every single day. It’s in your son’s name we pray. Amen. Amen. And again, guys, thank you guys so much.

Jackie: 44:12
And thank you, Tony, and thank you. We’re wishing you all the success. And you know what? God has given you this path for a reason. So you just keep on shining your little light because there’s good stuff to come, and I’m excited about it.

Tony: 44:24
I appreciate it, you guys, Unshaken family. Hope you guys have a great day and a great week, and we’ll catch you next week.