My next guest is Brianna MacDonald, founder of The Care Co. The Care Co is building a SaaS solution for young people and their educators, to build mental health literacy, strategies, and resilience at an early age.
Owing to the complexities and sensitivities of unpacking such a topic, we’ve split this over 2 parts. Stay tuned next week for the second half of the conversation.
In Part 1 we chat about the compounding effects of mental health, Brianna’s background intersecting on this exact space, how world events have made the need and possibility of a solution align, and strategies to help educators take up these difficult conversations.
For more on mental health, check out my interview with Cameron Higgins from Resonait here. Cameron will be showcasing progress at the Startmate Demo Day in a couple of weeks.
For more on software doing the heavy lifting of research for practioners, check out my interview with Brock Ford of MetaData here. Brock was most recently representing Australia and Australian startups at the Entrepreneurship World Cup.
Links
More about the ACE score from the CDC (Fact sheet)
ABC reporting on the sentencing of Terence Kelly in Western Australia, taking into account early childhood trauma (Article | 5 mins)
An example of the mental health literacy component of a PDHPE curriculum from the NSW state government
Multiple global studies on the comparative decline of young persons’ mental health
Finally, another reminder of how and where Australians can access mental health resources should you need them.
Show notes
[00:01:27] - [First question] – Brianna as a person, and The Care Co’s purpose
[00:02:24] - Brianna’s definition of mental health
[00:04:42] - Comparisons between mental and physical health
[00:05:27] - Compounding effects that lead to mental health breakdown
[00:06:51] - Discussing the highly timely case of Terence Kelly as one example of how early childhood trauma can compound negatively
[00:07:46] - A rundown of the ACE score
[00:08:55] - Examples of adverse experiences included and excluded in the ACE tool
[00:10:17] - Adverse health impacts in adulthood being traced to early childhood, and the development of the ACE tool
[00:12:32] - Brianna’s background in business and health, and underlying interest in this space
[00:14:24] - Early forays into entrepreneurship and contract work
[00:15:33] - Taking on a short contract in the education space that turned into a long-term commitment
[00:16:18] - Understanding the trauma-informed network and connecting all the dots
[00:18:19] - Recognizing that some solutions are not scalable, and using tech to enable scale
[00:19:40] - Brianna’s hypotheses around the effect The Care Co could have
[00:20:52] - The hope that tech can be leveraged for good
[00:22:28] - Breaking down the need for this specific kind of product
[00:23:40] - How Covid has brought both the need and ability to solve the issue to the forefront
[00:24:53] - The widespread evidence and anecdotes recognizing poor mental health in young people
[00:25:15] - Recognizing a problem versus tackling a problem
[00:26:00] - The slow rate of change in schools and teaching methods, and the impacts that has downstream
[00:26:55] - Validating customer “want” for The Care Co’s product
[00:28:09] - Creating a curriculum versus giving educatorsreal tools to deliver it
[00:29:54] - The journey to creating The Care Co from initial conception in Jan 2019
[00:30:56] - Designing a product for both children and educators, starting with children most at risk
[00:32:22] - Recognizing that children from trauma-informed backgrounds learn differently
[00:33:50] - Leveraging digital-first teaching in a post-Covid world
[00:34:36] - Building better mental health resilience with spaced repetition
[00:36:28] - Valuing the influence educators have on young persons
[00:37:24] - Making mental health hygiene a regular part of lessons rather than an annual compliance check
[00:38:09] - How The Care Co does the mental health heavy lifting for educators
[00:40:36] - What The Care Co does NOT replace
[00:41:43] - Part 1 wrap-up
Season 2, Episode 8 - Mental Health Part 1: building resilience in young people, at scale