Introduction:

On the 17th of November 2022, my only son was diagnosed with Dyspraxia which is, in simple words, a developmental co-ordination delay. And like any other parent, it took me time to get out of the denial tunnel. But this is when things started to become more clear:

"While the UNICEF data is showing that nearly 240 million children have some form of disability, my son is lucky because his mum has been a speech therapist for the last 12 years, but what about all the other children whose parents are already under-represented?

What about children whose parents do not speak English as their first language?

What about creating equal opportunities for those children?"

Problem:

When it comes to children with special needs, the main goal of allied health therapy is not removing their disabilities. Those children come to our clinics so we help them build new skills, like emotional skills. communication skills and motor skills.

But as someone who has been on both sides of the river: as a dad for a child with Dyspraxia and as a co-founder of a speech therapy clinic, I can make a clear statement: "it is impossible to those children to reach their full potential without engaging everyone around them in their journey".

And, this is where we need to ask ourselves a simple question: "Are we expecting from a child with special needs to build any of these skills by coming only once or twice to a clinic"

It is time...

It is time that we come all together, listen to educators and parents (especially those who don't have English as their first language), and address their pain points starting with:

1. The lack of a flexible technology that can support general therapy (like the Medicare) and goal-oriented therapy (like the NDIS).
2. Parents' language barrier, with 30% of the population born overseas and with 44% of adults reading at literacy level 1 to level 2 (Low)
3. Excluding educators from accessing therapeutic data knowing that children with special needs, like any other child, spend 21% of their week either at school or childcare compared to only 1% in a clinical setting.

Solution:

Because support systems have more layers than healthcare systems and because therapy is a collective work, we had no choice other than building IGNITE

The first practice management software that will pull data from different locations/clinics, aggregate it in a visual report and share it with educators and parents in their preferred language.

We are developing the first tool that extends therapy beyond clinical settings with a home practice extension. This tool tracks performance outside the clinic and channels that information back to the clinician providing children with special needs who are outside the NDIS with equal opportunities and access to therapy.

Traction:

Although everything started when my son got diagnosed on the 17th of Nov 2022, validation hasn't been triggered until March 2023. Since then, 87 interviews have been conducted (13 clinicians, 3 childcare and 63 parents).

We have also been fortunate to participate in two amazing programs: the Impact X pre-accelerator by UNSW and the Catalysr accelerator. These programs provided "Ignite" with enough exposure to be selected to pitch at Australian Healthcare Week (ICC Sydney) and to be part of DHF24.

At the moment we are in a conversation with Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect), and also speaking with Aspire Early Intervention (Aspire) and we have been offered from RMIT university to partnership with their research center.

What is next:

We are currently building the minimal viable product (MVP). Half of our campaign funds, will be used to finalise the MVP (including iteration costs), while the other half of the funds will be used for recruiting OT and ABA clinics to test our MVP in their clinic.