How to Juggle Running a Small Business Whilst Caring for a Disabled Child
If you’re caring for a disabled child, juggling your other responsibilities may seem like an impossible task, particularly if you’re running a small business. So how can you do it all?
Caring for any child has its challenges, but if your little one has a disability, it can make managing the rest of your responsibilities even more difficult.
For small business owners, caring for a disabled child presents a particularly sticky dilemma. The extra time and resources required to care for a disabled child certainly has the potential to clash with your commercial endeavours. Combined with external concerns, such as seeking legal help for birth injury or cerebral palsy compensation to ease the situation, can result in less than desirable outcomes.
Operations could easily grind to a halt without the right coping mechanisms. So, if you’re a small business owner that’s trying to juggle looking after a disabled child with your day-to-day operations, then then keep reading to learn more about how it can be possible.
Tips for Juggling a Business While Caring for a Disabled Child
- Lean on Your Loved Ones
Your loved ones are there for a reason. If you’re feeling as though you can’t cope with the challenges of caring for a disabled child and running your own business, then don’t be afraid to reach out for a little bit of support.
You can reach out to your loved ones for direct support, such as childcare, or even emotional support. If your circumstances are difficult to cope with, then there’s nothing wrong with taking 10 minutes to get everything off your chest. You’ll always feel much better for doing so.
- Check Your Local Council’s Family Information Service
If you’re looking for details about local childcare in your area, then you would be well advised to check your local council’s Family Information Service. Not only can you get the details of registered childminders, but you can also ask about other specialist services your child may need because of their disability.
This will give you more of a chance to focus on your business, safe in the knowledge that your child is still receiving the care they need.
- Make Sure You Have Tax-Free Childcare
As a parent, you may be entitled to £500 every three months for each of your children to help with the costs of childcare. For any children that have a disability, this figure goes up to £1,000 every three months.
This tax-free money can be used to pay for approved childcare, which means that you have one less expenditure to worry about if your business operations have taken a backseat while you’ve been looking after your child. For the childcare to be approved, they must sign up to the government-led scheme.
- Use the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for Children
The Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for children may help with the extra costs of looking after a child who is under 16 and requires more looking after than a child of the same age who doesn’t have a disability.
Depending on the level of support your child needs, the DLA rate will be between £23.60 and £151.40 per week. This can provide essential financial support while you look at alternative options for the future of your business.
- Speak to an Occupational Therapist
If a lot of your time is spent focusing on your business, it can sometimes prove to be difficult to understand exactly what’s best for your disabled child. One way around this issue is to speak to an occupational therapist.
An occupational therapist can help with barriers that affect someone’s social and physical needs, which may allow them to become more independent over time. This will be of great use if you want to continue running your business at the same capacity.
- Join a Disability Support Group
Joining a disability support group could be exactly what you need if you’re finding it difficult to balance your duties as a parent with your commercial interests. There are a wide range of groups out there, some of which cover specific disabilities. So, it’s a good idea to carry out a bit of research to see which groups interest you.
At a disability support group, you can meet with people who are in a similar situation to yourself. This will allow you to give and receive advice that will ultimately help you to better cope with your situation.
- Consider Appointing a Partner for Your Business
If you decide that you need to spend some time away from running your company to spend more time with your family and look after your child, then you will need to consider how to keep your operations running.
One way of achieving this would be to appoint a partner, who will be able to take on the heavy lifting. This way, you’ll still have a stake in your business, but will have support to rely on to ensure that it remains a success.
- Work from Home Where Possible
The COVID-19 pandemic has irreversibly changed the way we all work, opening up more opportunities for remote working. If your business allows for it, why not take the opportunity to work from home?
If you’re able to effectively pull it off, you’ll be able to better balance looking after your child with running your business, as well as being able to work more flexible hours that are better suited to your home life. Sounds good, right?
Are You Running a Small Business While Looking After a Disabled Child?
Running a small business while looking after a disabled child is never going to be a simple task, but hopefully these tips have given you a better idea as to how it might be possible.
Are you already running a small business while looking after a disabled child? If so, why not comment below with your own pearls of wisdom so we can share as much useful information as possible!
