Building a Neurodiversity-Affirming Health Practice

These transcripts are AI-generated, and spelling may not be 100% accurate (especially for names, places, and methodologies).

 

and ultimately

that meant that I have worked pretty much in almost every kind of OT

that provides pediatric therapy

so I’ve worked within a school setting

I’ve worked within diagnostic clinics

I’ve worked in the public health system in hospitals

I’ve also worked in private

and now currently director of my own practice

which interestingly wasn’t ever my big dream or goal

I definitely thought that

I had the most success working for somebody else

because being Autistic and ADHD

I thought that my skills were better in OT directly

Hello and Welcome everybody to The Healthy Business Lab Podcast

where we interview amazing

allied health business owners to share their insights

learnings and experiences

and today I’m super excited to have Claire Britton

from Neuroinclusion on the call with us today

Claire welcome to the podcast

Oh, Thank you so much Craig

I’m very excited to be here

yeah well

we had a chat a couple weeks ago before this call

and super excited for you to share

a bit of your background

we like to talk about sharing what our expertise is in

so I love to get a bit of the background of your expertise

and also in the way of some

ideas that people can implement from that expertise

that might actually help them in their businesses as well

so the floor is yours to run through a bit of that

and this conversation will just flow from there

amazing, so I’m a occupational therapist of 10 years

I’m originally from Melbourne and escaped Covid thankfully

and now live in Perth where it’s much sunnier and much slower

and since moving to Perth

I have worked for a number of companies

and had two babies and got married

and that naturally changes what we look for in work

and that for me also led to

being diagnosed with ADHD and Autism

and suddenly realizing that the kinds of clients that I was working with

so well and so naturally was because I

was of the same neurotype

which is the more that I share and talk about it

the more common it actually is for allied health professionals

so that’s quite cool and then I noticed

that a lot of the practices were

offering quite a lot of different things

and it was quite competitive

especially post covid and in Perth because

you know our borders were closed and so the

supply was quite short but demand was really high

and that naturally changed the landscape of hiring

and where people were looking for work

and suddenly we had a lot more flexibility

and ultimately

that meant that I have worked pretty much in almost every kind of OT

that provides pediatric therapy

so I’ve worked within a school setting

I’ve worked within diagnostic clinics

I’ve worked in the public health system in hospitals

I’ve also worked in private

and now currently director of my own practice

which interestingly wasn’t ever my big dream or goal

I definitely thought that

I had the most success working for somebody else

because being Autistic and ADHD

I thought that my skills were better in OT directly

rather than marketing and rather than

all the finance stuff and growing up my mum is tax accountant

so while she has provided a lot of exposure to a lot of the jargon

and the language I also learnt very early on that was her forte

so anytime that there was any kind of maths or that sort of thing

she would be able to jump in and support me with that

without me even questioning why

so unfortunately for me

that meant I just never really built the skills or the confidence

or even the curiosity to learn

and it wasn’t until I moved to Perth and you know

she’s in Melbourne, and I realised I have to learn this

this is actually foundational

I love that you’re such a brilliant

share of the vastness of experience with where you’ve been

and what you’ve done

and the wider experience I definitely we will be delving into

that business story in a little bit in a moment

but I just want to circle back to again

that idea of I think a lot of people in the allied health space

the neurodivergence that you’ve mentioned from your own diagnosis

and realisations and the like of that

you mention neurotribe idea

it’s I know, it’s a book it’s one of the first books that I had in the spaces

I had my own self realisation of being autistic

and the like

I love you just to delve into that just a little bit more of that

your own awareness of then being able to help guide the career

or the thinking behind some of those decisions that you took

moving from being an employee then into starting your own business

just a unpack that and

how you sort of

use that self awareness

in that process of working out what you’re going to do next

absolutely I think

I’m different in the sense that I would say

I’ve had almost no self awareness at the start

and what it was for me was my boss at the time

sitting me down and saying

you are beyond any opportunities that we can offer you

you are an asset to a company but we just don’t have the structuring and the

support that we think that you would need to flourish

and at the time I was really insulted and was like

what do you mean I feel like I’m doing a great job

and I took that the wrong way

and took that really personally

and thought that was their way of nicely

gently telling me to move on

but actually

that was a blessing in disguise because from that position

I then stepped up into

a national leadership role with a national company

and that really

into leadership and clinical

mentoring from a national standpoint

and learning about the industry

beyond just your own little company or your own little workplace

being able to see the trends and notice the needs from a larger scale

which my brain had the opportunity to do that before

and it also meant that

because I was doing a lot of coaching and a lot of supporting

other OT’s and therapists

I felt like

I could identify a lot of trends that they were experiencing

and shortfalls of different workplaces

and opportunities that I felt like were quite easy to fix

but no one was listening around how we can fix this

how we can better support neurodivergent staff

and even just newer grads that are just finding their feet

it is a huge transition to go from university full time

to work full time

and whilst we like to think we’re providing the right supports

no one was really sitting with them and hearing what works for them

because a lot of these new grad programs are fantastic

but they’re kind of a one size fits all

and they don’t really allow for

the nuance of where people are at in their life

and one person might find weekly supervision is really empowering

and helpful in a safety net

the next person might feel that that’s really overbearing

and overwhelming and would rather have a touch point email

but no one was engaging in those conversations

so from that point I also back in covid

I was working in PBS

because I thought that I could change the PBS world

and be more neuroaffirming

which is basically what I’ve always been and how I’ve always practiced

regardless of the things and the repercussions that I’ve

unfortunately had

like professionally

as I was in my final year placement

I did not realise at the time

but the practice was an ABA practice

and I actually failed my halfway placement

because I hugged an 8 year old boy who was very disregulated

and I feel like we had worked quite a lot to get him to request for

like hugs

because we’d explored his

proprioceptive input and at the time there was no other resources

we were on the side of the road

so we couldn’t really provide anything else

and he was begging me for a hug

and basically my supervisor said like

you cannot hug him we are ignoring this behaviour

and I did I hugged him

and at the time I felt a lot of guilt for that

because I prioritised the 8 year old over my own career

but now that’s like that’s exactly what I’m all about

that’s so cool like I own it

so spot on is like

when you’ve had the time to reflect on a number of things that you’ve

sort of talked about there

it’s the doing and then reflecting sort of process and then going all

how does that then guide well for future actions

and as I’m doing that

I like to think in patterns and it’s like just seeing a

nice little looping motion that is hey

I’m getting it basically feedback loops

everything that we’re doing

is that a fair comment with how you work and processing

absolutely yeah

thousand percent

so because of Covid I think everyone had to jump online

and working in the PBS space

meant that I was doing a lot of parent coaching

and parent training and the way that my brain works is very visual

so I love pastel rainbow

and in the second that I see something pastel rainbow

my brain absorbs the information

so I found that a lot of the textbooks

and the resources had a lot of bright red

a lot of bright blue and my brain just really wasn’t grasping it

and so I would create slides

at the time it was Powerpoint because we didn’t have Canva

we didn’t have these beautiful programs that we have now

I would create Powerpoints that were pastel rainbow

and then with Instagram I would start to sharing some of that

so that my

clients could access this information in more of a affirming way

because I found that when I was doing the parent coaching sessions

directly with parents it was quite intense

whereas when they were absorbing information on social media

they were normally more regulated

there was less of a

need to reply or a need for action right then and there

so that’s how it started and unfortunately but

that was end of 2020

and now it’s like over 40,000 followers

and it has become this whole thing

which is so wild to think about

I’m so fortunate and when I had my second baby

I noticed that

I had quite a lot of clients that were reaching out to me

or potential clients reaching out to me through the Instagram saying

we want you to be our OT

at the time I was still at that national practice

and I had to say like I’m on mat. leave

this is my employer they’re happy to hold your spot

and very quickly I had too long of a wait list

but to be even servicing myself

so I made the I decided that okay

obviously there’s demand I think, worst case scenario

it’s I’m a sole trader

I can always just fold I feel like being neurodivergent

we often are on the side of things are going to go bad

so we need to make sure that we have a foolproof backup plan

more than a contingency plan for success

we just need all of the backup plan stuff

in action and this was only in June 2024

now being August 2025 we now have a team of 18

we have two clinics in Perth

we’re based at Osborne Park and now in Cockburn

and we service about hundreds

different people all across Australia

we do quite a lot of corporate trainings

and workplace

and government organisations around what neurodiversity affirming is

because we have kind of created that environment ourselves

what I think is brilliant about that is again

seeing the evolution and your learnings across such

that the variety of areas within the industry

some people could see 12 months to go wow

18 people hundred clientele

that’s amazing leading up to that

none of that would have happened if it wasn’t for that 10 years

that you were talking about before of

absolutely the learnings

and picking up all those things

it’s kind of like the overnight success

that takes 10 years at the end of the day

but I guess what I’d love to dig into here is as well

it’s that is quite big

good growth from a business perspective in such a short space of time

I know that you would have loads 

we could probably feel about four different podcasts around this

some of the experiments that you’ve

done in growing the team in the market

you touched on the marketing there

that again wasn’t maybe an intentional thing to begin with

but it’s like an interesting experiment

and no doubt that you’ve played with and evolved with

as this is now grown I’d love to hear a couple of learnings

some experiments that you’ve tried in the business

that you’ve learnt from that

I’m sure there’s any other business owners out there going oh

I’d love to pick a few of the gold nuggets out of that yeah

sure so

I think my first big experiment was biting the bullet

and presenting at a conference

that to me just seemed like something academics did

and again that imposter syndrome

but actually realising that imposter syndrome is actually true

because I’d never done it before

and that’s okay

like you’re allowed to feel overwhelmed by something new

it’s not an imposter syndrome per se

it’s actually just the newness of an opportunity

and being neurodivergent and being very perfectionistic

I don’t like doing things unless I know I’m going to be 

100% successful

so putting yourself out there is is really hard

it’s and I feel like OT is especially we don’t do this well

we are kind of the allied health underdogs

I would say we’re quite newer on to the scene

we’re quite happy to sit back while the psychs champion a lot and

the speechies do an amazing job and the physios

OT seems to be the one that a lot of people don’t know about

they don’t really understand what we do and so yeah

that was the first big biting the bullet because at the time

I was a sole trader

I think I was only like three weeks in

so it was very early and again

I have that brain mentality that this is going to fail

so anything that happens positively is a massive win in my books

and I loved it

I really enjoyed being involved in the National OT Conference

it was the exchange one at the time

based here in Perth

and from that all of a sudden I had four staff at the time

they weren’t my staff obviously

but they came up to me and were like

we love your values we love what you’re talking about

that’s how we want to practice

noticing that our employer isn’t practicing like that

then they aren’t established in this niche

they’re too broad

they’re getting clients that don’t align with what I want to be doing

would you be interested in having staff

and at the time I was like

absolutely not

this is not what this is about this I didn’t come here for this

I just want to share some information yeah

I thought this was just my career development of exploring

presenting and facilitating trainings

not let’s recruit it was I’m a sole trader

like I have to do a year of sole trading before I can take the leap

and I think at that point

that’s when I said I need to get a business coach

I need someone who’s been there

done that who knows the lay of the land

especially from the OT standpoint

and I was really fortunate to have Alyce Svensk

and she really helped me from the start being able to identify that

again the demand was so high but the supply was so low

so the fact that I had 4 OT’s come straight to me saying

we want to work for you that’s unheard of

hopefully it’s slowly getting better

but it is pretty unheard of in the industry at this point in time

so I thought okay well time is of the essence

let’s take on an OTA

let rather than a fully fledged OTA

maybe I can hear that work on that more staggered

and so I hired a 4th year OT student and again

she was so empowered so can do there was nothing that was too hard

and at the time I was building a case load and I loved my clients

I didn’t want to hand them over

and trying to find like

another therapist that aligned with my practice

and someone that I knew had the same values and the same

standards of care slowly getting harder and harder

all of the great OT’s in Perth often are fully booked

trying to find someone was really tricky

and that ultimately led to okay

I need a team I need to start hiring those OT’s that were interested

let’s do some job trials

cause I don’t do job interviews

I don’t think that they’re affirming

and I don’t think that is a true test to someone’s success and to

how great someone can be as a therapist

so we did some job trials and ultimately hired them

and they’re still with me to this day

and even that OTA is now a new grad OTA this year

and she is absolutely incredible

she’s so proudly neurodivergent

Nicole is her name

she’s just phenomenal and she hit the ground running working full time

has never worked full time before in her life

and absolutely just smashing goals

so it’s been really cool to see with little

trial and errors and seeing how that evolves

another one that we’ve done

can I just jump in

because they just flowed so seamlessly

I just want to highlight what you have sort of stepped through

as far as even experiments

which again it goes to show

just stepping through the process and having what feels like a

just such a natural flow around it

hey there was the experiment of presenting at a conference

for self development

but for teaching and education and see what happens

then you kind of a say experimented by hey

I need some help with this

got a coach on board okay cool

and then no doubt with that again

we’ve only touched on a few other things here

but that brought about feedback loops testing

measuring

like to call that experimenting

and the like and then onto the job trials

the recruitment again

doing that in a way

I’d love for you just to go into that a little bit deeper

so I know that was from one of our first chats

it’s something that I love the idea of

so I love for you to just to go into how

that evolved

and where it sort of came from a little bit to just fill that out

for people as to how that could look or

how it looks for for yourself as it currently stands in it

what it was like initially to versus what it probably is now

yeah definitely

so initially it was trying to not do job interviews

I knew I didn’t want that

because having jumped from job to job to job to job

I had done a lot of job interviews

and I had noticed the same structure

similar questions we now live in a society where ChatGPT

and AI and TikTok are around and you can just ask

what’s the correct answer to these questions

so it’s certainly yeah it just changed the landscape

and it meant that

people were too focused on how to accurately or correctly answer

rather than answer genuinely

and that wasn’t what I was about

I wasn’t trying to catch out therapists

and identify flaws or identify like challenges

like I felt like a lot of job interviews do

they’re trying to find

is this person insightful with what they’re having difficulties with

and it does kind of as a neurodivergent person

we pick up on those trends like you were saying

but also we know when we’re being set up

and if we’re feeling like the interview process is actually

the interrogation

like you’re going to meet the masked version and in the therapy space

especially in our therapy space

there’s a lot of unmasking

which is very different and very confrontational

because of how society is and how we work

so being able to do a job trial in more of an authentic way

sets the scene from day dot

we do not follow the rules

we meet every legal requirement

we do everything as per Fair Work

we make sure everything is above board

but anything that can be adjusted to better suit our neurotype

is and isn’t just for our autistic potential employees or

you know any sort of diagnosis

it’s inclusive for everyone regardless

so we don’t have any issues with things like disclosure or 

anything like that because we kind of all share openly and own it

and yeah I love that so much and again

quote that is going to stick with me

I got a few little goosebumps here it was basically hey

under the old way

it sort of felt like you’re going to meet the masked version

so that whole idea of just being

especially coming in the neurodivergent space

of being able to see behind the mask

and people feel safe and comfortable and secure

to be able to feel as though they can share that

which like I say in a one or two short interviews

how much are we really going to do that again

it’s selecting which parts do I show or shouldn’t show

and it is coming back to what’s right or wrong

versus me just being me

so I love that you’ve set up a process for that

and yeah that’s just so good

yeah and it means that from a time standpoint as well

like I don’t have to then allocate time for job interviews

and then if the job interview isn’t successful

that was a waste of time or that wasn’t the best use of my time

plus my clients love it they get a 2 for 1 deal yeah

that’s when you’ve mentioned that previous on our previous call

you just like yeah

that just makes so much sense that it’s like

actually it can be such a good selling point is well

and such a lovely transition for somebody

and you touch upon it there that people

I’m guessing I just feel so welcome as far as that process to go hey

come on do a trial get to meet the team

work with people collaboratively about to share experience

and then I would guess that just flows on to such a nice

sort of onboarding experience

integration timeline

for the practice which I guess leads to that question of then

given the fact that you’ve grown

18 staff already no doubt

it just feels like a cycle that you’ve now got

probably pretty down pat into how you roll that out

which very much ties into the wider picture of business of how many

people we can support

what’s the cycle that we can

and what are the triggers for when

is it right and sustainable to bring a new team member on

and getting that balance between client loads

and what we’re trying to achieve in the practice

is that a fair comment as well

oh absolutely

and I think as well the industry is slowly changing

where we used to not be able to bring clients with us

when we change jobs and most great practices

or most client led practices that truly value the client

don’t work like that anymore

because the demand is so high for our services

we would rather the quality of the care

and the maintenance

of the relationship between the therapist and the client

so we’re comfortable with that even though I think it’s in WA

we’re slowly actually phasing that out

so you can’t actually say you can’t take your clients with you anymore

but because of that as well

it’s changing the nature of hiring and taking on new staff

beacause you don’t necessarily have to fill a case load from zero either

but yeah, it’s very interesting

it’s often evolving for sure

so good I feel as though there needs to be

another podcast for more experiments

but I do want to get to

some of the transformations that you’ve seen with

that the approach of what you’ve done

and I’m actually thinking of the transformations of the team

as well as

the clientele that you’ve actually got there

I’d love to hear one or two examples of

you know

in the 12 months that you’ve been in business

what you’ve already managed to achieve

yeah I think one of the biggest ones has been structure

because when you make for yourself

obviously the structure is just you and

and suddenly I feel like a lot of business owners

or people that want to explore their own practice

they feel the need to know everything

and then

I know I’d spent probably a good two weeks listening to every podcast

listening reading every book thinking that

and I still very much have this premise of I’m learning

I don’t know anything and that has been very humbling

and also has supported me

because I’m constantly engaging in the space

and constantly open to feedback

and that is, it’s like a precursor for

Co-design which is a big part of being your diversity affirming

and so sitting down with

my team leaders and we currently have five team leaders

and we have those monthly meetings where we sit down and go okay

what lights your fire

what particular areas of practice are you really great at

or most passionate at and so for some of my OT’s that might be

they’re really passionate about mentoring external OT’s

they might be doing incursions at schools to teach the school

staff about neurodiversity

they might be more creating resources or group programs

so they each kind of have like their niche

and the idea is that they chose themselves

they all got to choose and so therefore

I’m constantly telling them

if you guys are doing work that lights your fire

that feels meaningful and valuable

that then flows on to the rest of the team

so if at any point that project you lose momentum

you’re not too interested

that’s okay because these things happen but wait

there’s always more projects

there’s always more ideas

that’s especially the nature of being an ADHD business owner

I was just thinking that as you were talking about

that’s an endless supply that is yes exactly

to creating that structure really helped because all of a sudden

my junior staff and my new grads could see progression

and we know that through a lot of the research

that a lot of people are moving jobs

because they don’t know what career progression looks like

and that can be really complicated

especially when you’re in those early days of starting a practice

starting a business

because it might just be you and two other people or one other person

so

trying to be able to create a clear structure of career progression

what does that look like what’s involved

what’s the hierarchy because people want to feel successful

and people want to feel like they’re progressing

and that’s really hard to do as a sole trader

and that’s really hard to do in a smaller team

which is often why some new grads often go to those bigger

national companies

cause I feel that support in terms of being able to see

they can see just because of the size

that there must be some opportunity there somewhere

so again

being able to provide that in the small business setting is brilliant

I can see why again

that’s transformational for the team members to be able to go oh

you walk into one of these organisations where hey

you can still see the pathways

but I don’t have to get lost in this myriad of the large organisations

having worked in public health as well

you touch upon that right at the start of the call as well

you can say yeah there’s a lot of pathways

but it’s also easy to get lost in those pathways in some ways

unless you get a really good

team leader or a mentor or something like that

so yeah it’s great

and what about some from the client side of things

is there one or two people that just sort of stick out in your mind

as the transformations that you’ve been able to achieve again

we don’t need to share personal details and the like

but just something that sort of

in the first year that you’ve done this

just gone this is why I’m doing this

I’d love to hear an example of that absolutely

so I think one of the biggest ones for me

I’m really fortunate I keep an OTK slide

I feel like that’s paramount

I know a lot of business owners do and some don’t

and that’s it’s a personal choice

I only have three so I’m very selective

and these 3 are honestly incredible

and I’ll probably see them till the day I die if they’ll have me

less than one of them did say to me

when will you not be my OT anymore

is it cause I’m doing too well

will you stop being my OT

I was like that is actually the best question you could ever ask

that is monumental and such a cool sign that you’re doing so well

and I was like

but no if we become friends

I can’t be your OT

like there’s like professional guidelines around that

and that was really cool but I have a amazing 14 year old who

is twice exceptional so has giftedness and has Autism and ADHD

and quite a lot of complex trauma around school

and I’ve been working with her around

what school looks like for her

what’s meaningful education

she was on a full scholarship academics at her school

which put a bit of demand on her

I guess cause that was a maintenance thing

but she hardly went and hardly engaged at school

but then she do a test and she would get top mark

so she didn’t really see the point

like

what is the point of school and why do I need to turn up for this

yeah I just do what I need to do

and I don’t have to deal with that over there

I just I can do that just turn up to the test

get the best score get a certificate

be celebrated and then go like that

and it was really interesting to hear that experience

cause it’s quite different to my own personal experience

I definitely am not academic by any stretch

seeing for her that she was just so academic

but also not studying and just being able to turn up and

having these conversations at 14 of

what does why do I bother going to school

what is school meaningful for me

and for another term

she stayed purely for what we were learning around soft skills

around personal growth

and we talked a lot about resilience

and the fact that going to school

when you’re not really learning anything

is actually a really hard thing to do

and so doing the hard thing is actually building your skills

be able to do more hard things

and whilst the academic stuff wasn’t hard for her

the going and listening to stuff

she kind of already knew or could understand quite quickly

and so she continued to go to school and has actually

since change schools and now going to Lynn Beasley Academy

which is an alternative school and it’s absolutely flourishing

doing more project based work

she’s got a project to set up the school library

and she is absolutely incredible

and doing so much better in terms of her overall health

her overall happiness

and her sense of self is just like second to none

I can only want that for all neurodivergent people

it’s so cool such a great way to round out the conversation with

is what I’ve just wrote down there

that sense of self

that wraps a lot of what you’ve said up across the conversation today

and wishing that upon anybody we work with

especially the neurodivergent

community as well that’s been brilliant

there’s been so many takeaways that I’ve got

I’ve got a couple of pages of notes here

just myself

and I’m sure everybody listening is going to be doing the same

and I would love for people to be able to

obviously we’ll add all your details in the show notes

but I’d love for you to share as well

where’s the best place for people

to follow your content you touched on Instagram earlier there as well

but what are the best places for people to connect

yeah definitely

so LinkedIn Claire Britton is probably the easiest

for me personally

we also have

Neuroinclusion on LinkedIn

on Instagram, on Facebook

we also have a website www.neuroinclusion.com.au

we’re always willing to have chats and work with what your

goals are whether it’s OT

whether it’s professional and corporate

because we really do want to see that neurodiversity acceptance as

spread as far as possible

I love that share I love the message

and I have a feeling we’re going to have more chats off the back of

this awesome podcast today

so once again Claire

thank you so much for your time

and for sharing all that valuable information

as always at The Healthy Business Lab

we’d love for you to like, subscribe so you

you can hear more amazing chats just like I’ve had with Claire today

so Claire once again

Thank you very much! 

Thanks for having me.