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The host of Heartfelt Perspectives, Cheryl Jennings, aims to share good news and promote a positive outlook on life. She wants to help people see the good in others, especially those with disabilities or special needs. Cheryl interviews different individuals who are making a positive impact in the world. In this episode, she speaks with Bill Walters, who runs a website called perfectlyimperfectfamilies.com. Bill shares his own experiences with helping families with special needs, including his daughter who has various impairments. He discusses the importance of early intervention and finding solutions to improve their quality of life. Additionally, Bill talks about his role as a caregiver for his aging mother and the challenges he faced in providing proper care. He emphasizes the need for planning and understanding options such as long-term care and special needs trust. Cheryl appreciates Bill's insights and encourages listeners to educate themselves on these important topics. All right. Hello, hello, hello. We're so excited to have you today at Heartfelt Perspectives. I'm Cheryl Jennings, the host, and our purpose is to share good news and to be able to help people find hope in our world and be able to see how our lives can be improved from day to day, just starting at home with us, with our families, with our neighbors, wherever we are. And to see that there are good things that are happening in our world and not just seeing the news that dwells on the negative things. One of the biggest areas that I find people are negative about are people that have any kind of disabilities or special needs. We tend to see their flaws before we can ever see beyond that, and sometimes people never get beyond that. And my purpose is to help people say, we don't have to see the outside. We can look at the inside of people and look for the things that are good, how we can help them grow, how we can help each other to mature, to be kind, to be courteous to each other, and to be able to make this world a better place to be. One of my fun things is being able to find new people to get to interview and find the different ways that they are reaching out in our world and making it better. I just got introduced to somebody that I had to stop right now and be able to say, let's put this on tape. Bill Walters, I am so glad to have you today. And I love the title of your website, perfectlyimperfectfamilies.com. That's amazing. And I just want to say welcome. So glad to have you. Thank you so much. Happy to be here, and it's a pleasure to be spotlighted on the greater good. Good. Well, and this is a wonderful place to be, and I hope that a lot of people get to hear what you've got to say because you have a lot of wisdom in there. And families that have special needs especially will want to listen to what you've got to say because you have a background that's going to help with caring issues, with special needs, with kind of financial problems too that they may not even know about. So let's just begin, and let me let you tell me and the audience about your background, a little bit about what all has happened that got you to the place you are right now. Sure. Happy to share. So first of all, my name is Bill Walters, and I work for Transamerica, and I'm an independent agent, which means that I get to do what I want to do most, which is help people. I don't work under a quota, and I enjoy making a difference in people's lives. And I'll just tell you my background and my story. In 1991, I graduated from Drexel University with a degree in finance and business, and I helped my friends and family really well, and they still all need my help today. And I started to develop an interest in helping families with special needs and got in the world of educational advocate and staffing. And in 2000, the year 2000, my daughter was born in August, and something just wasn't quite right. Now, she doesn't have Down's and doesn't have elongated face or any apparent issues to the naked eye. But upon further review, she was diagnosed and has an IEP. She has a hearing impairment. She has a sight and hand coordination impairment. She has night vision impairment. She has a reading disability, along with irritable bowel syndrome, as well as a variety of allergies and things that she's allergic to. And so, when she embarked into the world of school, she was held back in her kindergarten year, and she had an adjustment period, is what I would say. And so, as she moved forward into education, especially in sixth grade, she was kind of bullied because she was only reading at first grade, fourth month. And we then focused on trying to get her help. So, I decided to challenge the school district and see if they can improve my daughter's grade level by 0.1 months, right? Just go up to first grade, fifth month, you know, something small. And when they failed my daughter and myself, I decided to go outside and went to a place called Salish University, S-A-L-U-S, which does eye tracking. Now, what's important here is that eye tracking, her left eye stayed focused on the word, and her right eye would go out and back in, out and back in. And so, they did this, like if you've ever seen a horse with blinders on, they put a pair of goggles on her when she was reading, and that's how they discovered it. Now, the unique stat about having your pupils tracked correctly together is 30% of the special needs behavioral issues, okay, or disability issues can be corrected by having your eyes coordinated together. The fact that Salish University has. So, this is really important because if you catch this at a younger age, say like in kindergarten, first or second grade, you could remove the negative stimulus of being a special needs child or a child with learning disabilities by just correcting that impairment. Now, it took nine months, three one-hour training sessions a week, plus practice in between for her to improve. But by the end of eighth grade, when she retested, she tested out at ninth grade, first month, which is a miracle in itself. We then worked on her other issues. She had allergies. She had issues with being allergic to brown dye number nine, yellow dye number seven, red dye number three, gluten, and we removed them. Plus, there's medication out now that has, not medication, but help out now that drops that you could take to remove the heavy metals from your system, and it changes the behavior of people with autism as soon as three days to two weeks, which, and what do I mean by behaviors? I mean that the behavior of the child improves where they are not self-isolating, and they act more like a, quote, normal child, according to the parents of these children who've gotten medicine for free. And what it does is this medicine, I call it medicine, but it's really an alternative health remedy, right? Removes the heavy metals from your system, like mercury and lead and things that have accumulated in the body can't get rid of, and that might be causing the irritability or the emotional outburst. And so the parents have recorded some ridiculously high number of 70% of emotional outburst reduction within a period of two weeks, which makes the child less irritable. And if a child's less irritable, then the parents are going to be less irritable, and it returns to normalcy and less outbursts. So, this has been my background for constant improvement in health, and if you'd like, I'll continue with caretaking of my mom, or you can stop. Okay, let me ask you a question about that. Can people find this at the health food store? No, they can't. So, okay. How did they find this? If they contact me, I will introduce them to a person who will walk them through the process. Okay. And the reason I say this is because if they go through a health food store, another location, there's going to be a substantial markup. And that's not what my goal here. My goal is to help. So, if the person who's on the board of the company, I want to help them, I'll introduce them directly to him, and he could deal with them directly. I don't want anything to do with it other than for the child to be healthy. But that's good. And what I want people to know is we'll put that information on this with this program so that they can meet you and be able to find out how to help their child. Because that is tremendous news for people who have children that have the outbursts and have the problems. And a lot of times, they don't even know that there's mercury or lead in the system that a lot of us probably have it from being older and having teeth that were filled with some of these things that weren't good for us. Exactly. And that's, and so here's the thing, every child and every person is different, but if there's a chance that behavior could be improved by taking seven, eight drops of this product and water in the tub, rinse it, and within two days to two weeks, their behavior changes for the positive. And all it's doing is getting rid of toxins in their system, and it's healthy and safe, then it's a good thing. Right? And I love it. And all you do is help somebody. Right? And so, again, that's what we're here to do is to bring shed light on situations. And there's no magic pill, but because everyone's unique, but if it works for your child, and the child becomes more calm and more teachable and more lovable, because some children with autism don't want to be touched. And there's children that are making direct eye contact and allowing you to touch their neck, which are great strides. You know, you can put your hand on them, not in a harmful way, but in a loving way, and they embrace it. Right? So, again, not diagnosing, not promising anything, just giving people hope. Well, and the other thing is, how did you find out about the allergies to the dyes and the different things? What kind of doctor or person did you go to that helped you discover what your doctor was allergic to? So, I went to my pediatrician, and then I asked them for a food allergy test, which is way more extensive than a standard allergy test. It's about 160 dots on their back that will then show up what they're allergic to. And then once they see similarities in a certain type of food or an allergen, then they can go dig deeper. So, for instance, you know, my daughter's allergic to dust, mold, mildew, right? So, and now has hay fever or asthma conditions, right? When it's too dusty. So, if she goes into an air conditioning unit that hasn't been cleaned properly, it sounds like she's developing a cold or has difficulty in breathing because it has, right? So, we wouldn't have known that in the past until we had the test done. So, you go to your pediatrician. Yeah, excuse me. It's kind of like, when a child that has autism has an outburst, a lot of times they're hearing noises that we don't even hear, like the noise of some of the lights in, you know, in the grocery stores may have a buzzing noise that really affects them. And that's why they may break down and start crying at that time. And we don't even know what's wrong. But that's where people walking by need to be careful not to judge other people and think that everything that happens is because they're not a good parent. And that happens to people a lot. Yeah, I don't think it's, I think the key thing is, is that you have to let the child know that they're loved, that you're not going anywhere, that they're accepted. And then in the same aspect, you have to say that to yourself, because to be given looks while shopping or stay away from them, they're crazy, right? And, you know, you get that people looking at you sideways. All they have to do, the biggest thing someone can do for somebody who has a child with special needs, okay, in that category or disabilities, is offer to babysit for the family, to give the parents respite, to give them time to take a deep breath and exhale and allow them to, their mental health to recuperate. These things, no one knows and it's just a two hour break. So you're not wound so tight. It's so important for your mental health. That's such a good point, Bill. I'm so glad that you brought that out because I'm always telling people that that is important. And also, what you're going to talk about next is your mom. That's important for caregivers and caregivers are often confined to homes because they've got somebody that needs full time care. Our parents get where they need to be cared for and not being able to leave that house, even if you're able to drive and could go accept that. You can't take somebody with you that's confined to a bed, or they're not able to be in public because they'll wander away or for whatever reason. Important to go and get to know your neighbors, find out if there's something you could do for them. Maybe you could mow the yard, or maybe you could pick up groceries for them, or maybe you could just say, would you like me to come and read to your parent or sit with them so that you can go do something by yourself. I want you to tell us now, not only have you dealt with a daughter that has problems, tell us the rest of the story you were telling me about what your dad asked you to do. So, in 2015, my dad was on his deathbed and it's a Navy man and he sat up straight and grabbed my arm and he said, promise me that you'll take care of mom. And I said, yeah, I promise. He says, no, I want you to promise me. I said, yeah, dad, I got it. And he goes, she doesn't go into a home. I said, no, I know that from day 1. She's been saying she doesn't want to go into a home when she was 30 years old. I get it. And so I didn't know what I signed up for. So, I said, yes, and, you know, the moment my dad passed, my mom aged 10 years in 1 day. It was the onset of dementia, Louie dementia, as well as Alzheimer's, and it was a gradual slope downwards. And as a result of the gradual slope downwards, she basically became more and more dependent on us and what we had to do. Right? And as a result, I had to learn the hard way about fall risk and lift rails and hand rails and support rails and. Bed alarms and adult incontinence and infections and undertaking medicine or overtaking medicine 1 night, I had to stay up for essentially 36 straight hours because she overtook medicine on the weekend and we had to make sure that it wore off. Before she could go further into and back into a routine, but when you hire a personal care assistant, and you, you, you do the allocation of the medicine. So they don't overtake or undertake and you go on a doctor visits and you take a note taker or you go, or you take somebody there with you to record the session. These are all necessities to help you with caretaking of someone that's older. And the last thing you want to do is to be the parent. So you have to then find a caretaker who's going to bathe your, your mom or your dad properly as well as make sure it occurs every other day. So the skin doesn't get too dried out. But also that they stay healthy as a female. It's really important for and you have, there's these things out now that are called 12 hour diapers. Right? So, if they will absorb a large amount of waste or urine overnight, so that they don't have the parents don't have to get up in the middle night, especially if they're fall risk. Right. And so this is really important. Now, these diapers I was unaware of when my mom was around, but they would have been real useful instead of having to get up every night at 3 o'clock or 330 in the morning to run down the stairs, make sure you help her to the bathroom and then from the bathroom back back to bed. So, there's no regrets in the raising. It's just that what I learned, I want to share with others so that they don't have that big learning curve as well. And that's wonderful because I think a lot of parents expect things to be to just happen and then kids don't know what's going to happen. I mean, what if that means they sure I'll take care of mom, but they don't realize what's going to be involved. But the other thing is, like you said, I like educating people to actually end up with a crisis before they ever find out what are we going to do? If something happens to mom or dad, because then you've got all the emotional problems to go with that and you don't you have a parent maybe that doesn't want to go into your home doesn't want to leave there's and you can't be in there. With them, so, and they don't understand. They're beyond understanding that you still have a life. You've got to work. You've got to do these things. But at the same time, you want to take care of them. So, there's so many issues that if we just learn what's ahead, what changes are going to happen and how it's going to affect our lives can make it easier than waiting until the last minute to find out what's going to be required. So, I appreciate that you're trying to do that to share that. Well, I thank you for allowing me to have the format to express that. I mean, I'm a very big proponent of putting things in writing. And when your parent is still cognizant. So, when they are of sound mind, it's important to get their wishes. Dreams or aspirations for retirement in writing. Signed by them laminated so that they, so, you know, and they know. That everyone's on the same page, so that we know what long term care requirements look like if they're staying in a home, or do they want to be put into the senior care or assisted living or what's the best method. For caretaking for them now, what people don't realize is. No matter where you are in the United States, the cost of home health care for seniors. And or for disability children. It's extremely high and the national average is 27 dollars an hour. Right so if you have a need for around the clock pair. And you do the math, it's pretty expensive. So, at least it will cost you according to the national average. 58000 dollars a year, but most senior care living facilities. Are 130,000 dollars a year and up. For around the clock coverage and. Who has that type of money, right? So, either you have to plan for long term care planning. Uh, in advance and set aside money. For that, when you're younger, or you have to use savings. Right and so you have, you have, you have a choice 1 or the other. And no 1 wants to be on it, but I can tell you this that. 70% of the population will require. When they hit into their 80s, okay, some form of long term care planning or sooner. The average age for a male is 80. The average age for a female is 84. Okay, and the normal stay on long term care or assistant needs. Is 48 to 51 months. So, once that slope happens. And it's a gradual slow. That's how long they need the assistant care. So, you need to know what your daily benefit is. Or what your monthly benefit is. So, you can be playing that number out and for that duration. So, they don't subtract it from your savings or your legacy. It's really important. You don't want to leave your caretaking up to the state. Okay, you don't want to, you want to have a choice. Okay, that brings us to another point because there's something else that you know how to do. And I may have you back to talk about this at another time and more in detail. But up front, you help families understand about special needs trust. A lot of families don't understand anything about it. In fact, we were told for years, there was nothing we could do about our son, except keep him out of our will. Go figure. Okay, it was only about 10 years ago that we, and he will, he will be 53 right away. It was only about 10 years ago we heard of special need trust. But I've met people who do not know anything about what that is. So, tell us about that, what that means. So, it's important to find a special needs trust attorney in your state, the state you reside in. Now, they know your state laws, but the basic rules are this, that if your child is physically unable to work, okay, and they're on disability income or social security, okay, that those funds are to be used strictly for shelter or housing as well as food. Now, the purpose of setting up a special needs trust is to fund all the other outside activities. So, the monies that come into that are payable to that and not to that individual. So, they do not lose their health benefits. They do not lose their funding from the state. Now, once this trust is funded, okay, and there's multiple ways to fund it, that money can be used for transportation to therapy, it could be used for going out for coffee, it could be used for a personal care assistant, it could be used for buying clothes or going on a vacation, heaven forbid someone has fun. But this money can go into that fund, right, and it can be sourced through, the funding can be done through life insurance or an annuity, or it can be funded through financial investments, right? It doesn't really matter how it's funded. The importance is the protection needs to be set up because, and here's the key, it's not the size of the person's heart that matters, it's their financial wellness and mental well-being. So, if God forbid the parent does not outlive the child, which is kind of sad to say in that way, but you don't want anyone to take advantage of the adult child or the child emotionally, physically, or financially. You want to set up the terms of the distribution of funds and how things are paid in that trust, and you want to make sure that you allocate enough money so that the cost of maintaining the mental health and well-being of your child and your loved one is taken care of and they're not a burden to anyone else, and you're doing it from the love of your heart, right? And that is so important. In fact, what we want to say right now is that you've offered to help people find who can do this in their own state. If they would like that, you can direct them to a place. Is that correct? You tell what you're offering here. Yeah, so I'm offering two sets of help. The first set of help is that I can help them find a special needs attorney. You know, once we know what their budget is or what they can afford to have a person set up a trust for them, for their family, either a personal trust or a special needs trust, it's a very big difference, okay? But we can do that. And the second thing is that if they are a family that has a child with disabilities, each state has a number of services that they can be eligible for. It just requires filling out paperwork. And so you don't know unless you ask. So if they contact me from a certain state, I'm more than happy to forward them that information free of charge and get them on the right road for help and recovery. All I ask is that when it comes time to getting them organized and protected, that they give me an opportunity to allow me to help them, right? Because I don't charge for the financial planning side. And I will not charge them, okay? Unless their last name is Gates or Rockefeller, I won't charge, okay? But at the time of when they have to fund their trust, it will cost them money. And that money is how their protection is put into place, just like any other product that they would have to purchase, right? So the good news is that when they apply that protection for funding, it's sent to them in an income tax-free shelter, which means creditors and outside people can't touch it. They are fully protected, okay? And that is really a big deal too, because there's so many people eager to take away whatever money it is, even if it is for someone who will never know what happened to them. That's just, that's amazing, Bill. Right. And so you want to help people, and you want to do what's right, and you want to make sure that they're protected. And that's really what the bottom line is. It's not about anything else but protecting your loved ones and making a difference. And that buys you peace of mind, and you cannot put a price tag on that, right? Because now everything's... That is so right. Well, this has just been really amazing, because you've got a lot of personal experience, and that's why I'm out here too. The personal experience makes you understand the hardships that people can go through, and yet you know there's hope. There are answers out there. It's just sometimes people don't... We don't know where to find the answers, and so that's what we're trying to do, is open the doors to people to say, look, there's hope. Don't give up. Don't think there's just nothing you can do, because there is, but it comes at a price of you being willing to do it. Make up your mind you're going to do it, because it takes a lot of effort to stick with it, and yet there's no way you can put a price on what you've done to take care of a person that needs your help like that. I mean, I wouldn't take anything for my son. I absolutely am so grateful that I have him, and yet with the amount of problems that we've had, a lot of people go, I could never do that. Well, you will if it's your child. You will do this, but it helps to know what you're up against and how to go around some of those barriers that are out there that seem to distract us and keep us feeling like, what are we going to do now? Right now we're waiting, needing desperately to get a wheelchair. The one he's in is just falling apart, and we've been waiting for already a month or two months for this chair, and it's collapsing on him. It's literally the only way he can exist is in that chair, and yet it's just a piece of junk right now. So you just have to fight these battles to get up and do it again and do it again, and you've done this with your daughter, finding the answers for things that she needed to know. Can I have you back on here again? Sure, it'd be my pleasure. I would love it. I appreciate you being here, Bill. Is there something that you'd like to tell people before you leave? Yeah, I'm a man of faith, and so I believe that if you put your trust in God that he will provide, and sometimes that guidance or trust that you develop with him, he gives you wisdom and discernment. So hopefully you put your faith in that world and you listen to podcasts like this so you can gain that knowledge and apply it and use it for your benefit, and I'm always at your access. You're more than welcome to visit my website and make a personal appointment with me. I will not charge you for any consultation whatsoever, and I'm here to help. So blessings to you and your family and appreciate the opportunity to serve. Well, and Bill, we will be having your website and your information posted on there also. And so for those that are listening, I hope you have gained some information today, but I also want to tell you, if you feel like this is a benefit, please subscribe and then share it with other people because that's the only way people are going to find out what's out there that could help them and their family to do better than just exist or get by day-to-day without knowing all the opportunities that are available in every state, because every state is different, and there are problems that one state might have, another one might have worked through that, but every state is totally different. That's for sure. We've learned that the hard way when we moved and didn't realize it was going to be such a change. But anyway, this has been a wonderful time of being together, and I appreciate you as an audience tuning in, listening to our heartfelt perspectives on life, how to make it better, how to make our families better, how to reach out and to touch other people to make their lives better. Do something good for somebody, and don't forget to be grateful for everything because God has given us so many blessings, and we need to be cognizant of thanking him on a day-to-day basis for what we've got because he's good. He is good. And I appreciate Bill being on here, and I look forward to the next time that we can get together. So stay tuned.