58: Hoarding: Two Experts, Part 2

We continue with a Part 2 segment on the topic of hoarding. Many underlying issues play into disorders around hoarding, and they may vary widely from person to person. The good news is that there are multi-faceted resources and professionals available to help and jumpstart the process of change!

I’m joined by Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail, a professional organizer, presenter, and hoarding consultant. From her background as an educator, Dr. Leslie obtained her Ph.D. in Community Psychology and formed a new approach to those with organizational challenges, coming from a place of curiosity and a genuine desire to help. Join us to learn more!

 Show Highlights: 

●      How Dr. Leslie became a professional organizer

●      How the hoarding TV shows usually try to present the person’s background and trauma that have led to hoarding tendencies

●      How hoarding was originally classified as a subtype of OCD and not its own disorder

●      Why many hoarders think they need the protection of “stuff” because they have been violated in some way

●      Why simply cleaning out a hoarder’s stuff does NOT fix the problem or help in the long run

●      The best ways to help raise awareness about hoarding disorders

●      The stages of readiness in making changes: awareness (thinking about change), planning action, and taking action

●      How Dr. Leslie uses an icebreaker worksheet to start the conversation about possible hoarding problems

●      Where to begin if you need help with hoarding issues and want to change

 Resources and Links:

Connect with Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail: Website, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook

Mentioned by Dr. Leslie: Helpful resources through the Chicagoland Hoarding Task Force

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes

• Transcript

  KC Davis 0:05

  Hello sentient balls of stardust. Welcome to Struggle Care. My name is KC Davis. I'm your host. And today we are with Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail, PhD. Yeah, you want to put the doctor in there every time. Leslie and I have been following each other on tick tock for a while. And Leslie, will you just sort of introduce yourself? Tell us what you do who you are.

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 0:24

  Wow. Okay. So like a big question, right. So I have a professional organizing business declare order professional organizing, I've been doing that for about 12 years. Prior to that it was an educator in early childhood special education. So I came to professional organizing from a place of looking at people's strengths and what they're good at, and using that to teach them how to help them make changes in their space. And I wasn't so concerned with sort of the middle of the bell curve way of organizing. Then as I'm going along, and I'm doing those things, I really fell into learning more about people who have hoarding challenges. And it kind of reminded me of the Early Childhood Special Education days of when I was working with children with autism, autistic students, and we were just learning this was right at the beginning of learning how to really teach them to educate, and we had picture schedules, and it was all very groundbreaking, we had little Polaroid cameras. And this reminded me of that I felt like that people with hoarding challenges that I was seeing on those TV shows weren't being seen and heard properly. So that was I ended up doing a deep dive into it. And I thought I need to study this more. And I had like this midlife crisis PhD, I want to talk about the show hoarders, I just want your thoughts, your insights, that's how I found out about it about hoarding was from what I call it, those TV shows, right, hoarders and hoarding buried alive. And I was watching those that was not a professional organizer at the time. And that's where I had this reaction. Like, this is odd to me that they're coming in, and they're meeting a person in a time of stress, and they're forcing them to do something that's unnatural and uncomfortable. And then the families are all fighting, and it just was really uncomfortable. But I couldn't put my finger on why exactly. And I thought I'm going to write a book, which I have done. It's a middle grade fiction novel, it just hasn't made it out of the computer yet. But from the point of view of a child living in a home, because that's was my background, right? So I was trying to picture like, how is Child Development impacted by living in this way. And in my research, I found out about professional organizing. So I the long way around to say I ended up being a professional organizer. And four months later, someone who I had met, the president of my local chapter of organizers said, we've been called to do an episode, do you want to join us because she knew she and I had talked. So here I am four months into starting a business, I'm driving down to downstate Illinois to film an episode of Hoarders, you know, with Geralyn, Thomas, who at the time was like kind of a superstar host and all that. And I learned very quickly that, like it was just a TV show, right? They had a storyline, they brought in this dramatic team to we were all volunteers and we did what we could to. But it was almost like, they would move stuff out of the way to film the shot, and then move it back. And, you know, I wasn't sure that the people were being helped, necessarily. I mean, there's the clean out, and it's addressing the immediate problem and making the environment safer. But I wasn't sure but I did go on to do two more episodes of it as a volunteer on the team. And it's been over my journey of research and over a period of time that what I say now is that I find them exploitive, however, they have raised awareness about hoarding an incredible way, there's no way that kind of reach could have happened. And so when I did my research study, that I'm talking to people, and they're saying, I didn't know that I grew up in a hoarding home, I didn't know I was a child of hoarding parents and tell, I watched the TV shows, like, oh, that's what happened to me. Or I talked to people interviewed people who identify as having hoarding challenges, because of the TV show, and they know they need to do something about it before it gets to that level. So I get phone calls from people and they'll say, I'm not like that on TV. You know, I'm not like that bad. But,

  KC Davis 4:24

  ya know, there is something really well, first of all, I think one of the things that I appreciate doing a love doing and try to do on this podcast, it's like taking a thing. And doing like, the most difficult human thing which is holding it and all of its complexity, where it's like, there are parts of this, that are we would maybe say negative and then there are parts of this that we would say positive and and even that is not even the right language where it's like sometimes the thing just is and I think our tendency is to either want to hold it up and go, this is such a great thing or we want to sort of push it down and go here all the time.

  happens with this. It's so awful. And it's a lot more difficult to just talk about something, as you said, like, listen, there are some issues here. And there are some ripple effects here. And there's some ripple effects here. And I do totally resonate with what you're talking about. Because there's something about the recognition that what you're struggling with isn't unique, where you realize like, oh, maybe I'm not broken. Like maybe this is something, not just my own falling apart, inability to do something, because if so many people are demonstrating this same pattern of behavior. And it's even if it doesn't look exactly like mine, I don't know. But I feel like that offers a little bit of hope. Right? It gives you a sense of community like a place to belong. I noticed that in comment sections when I've talked about this topic, even on Tik Tok, the people that identify as being children of hoarding parents, they can talk to each other and say, Oh, my gosh, I didn't realize this was sort of a universal children reporting and parents experience and they find some commonalities and common ground. And there's something powerful in that knowing it's not just you, well, you have an interesting confluence of interests, because one of the things that I did learn from the hoarding shows, to their credit, they did make a point to go into someone's background, and talk about the trauma that they had experienced, instead of just going in and being like, look, go get a lot out of this, right, like they connected it to, like, there have been some real difficulties here that, you know, along with some other factors have led to this hoarding disorder or these hoarding tendencies. And I don't you know, that's really the first I mean, even with a counseling degree, that's the first time that I learned about that, right? That's the most recent conference that I went to just the other weekend, it was even brought up like, should it even be called hoarding disorder? Because there's so many co occurring conditions and so many other things going on? That why are we identifying it, but just the most visible tip of the iceberg piece, maybe it should be identified a different way, that hoarding is a symptom, that was just something that came to my attention that was, you know, a conversation that was had, you know, what it reminds me of is, for those who are not familiar with, like, all of the mental health diagnoses are in a book, like a big diagnostic book. And with a lot of disorders, for example, like anorexia, when you get a diagnosis, there are also what's called subtypes. So like, you can get a diagnosis of anorexia. And then you can also get a subtype of binge purge, which basically says, like, this is a person that meets all the criteria for anorexia. And there are these other subset of symptoms, where they are binging and purging over and over and over. Same with like ADHD, like you could get an inattentive type, or a hyperactive type or a mixed type. And, you know, when you first brought that up, my first thought was like, I wonder if it like better fits a different disorder. It's just like hoarding type or with hoarding tendencies, like you can sometimes like dock those things on.

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 8:13

  Right. So it'd be interesting to see where the research takes it over the next decade, because it was just added as its own standalone diagnosis in 2013. Where I think before it was, I don't want to say it incorrectly. But I think it was a subtype of OCD before. So you could have OCD with hoarding tendencies, and then now its own, but now it's like, Ooh, maybe the subtype was your boy, like, maybe that's more accurate. So if somebody is listening, and they don't really know anything about hoarding disorder, they might be surprised to hear that hoarding disorder was a subset of OCD. And even to this day, it's still in the chapter on obsessive disorders, or I don't remember what the like, it's still kind of lumped in the similar disorders, they might be surprised to hear that it is close to OCD. So can you kind of explain why that is? Well, it has to do with compulsion. Plain and simple like it's been instead of compulsion for ritualistic behaviors around cleanliness, and sort of compulsion for ritualistic behaviors about what to do with belongings. And many of the people's homes that I've been in that have these tendencies. It's fascinating. And I've heard you talk about it, actually, I think on a recent episode about dealing with the garbage and what to do with trash and how to process trash and keep it out of the landfill. And there's so many blocks that they have with being able to get rid of something for those reasons. Oh, I know what it was it was that that hoarder? It was a different podcast, you were a guest. And you talked about that. What was that? That hoarder or what is it called African?

  KC Davis 9:47

  I've been on so many podcast, I know what podcast you're talking about, but I can't remember the name of it. It's a good episode. And the show hoarders showed like that pretty extreme cases, do you find that people are surprised to learn that maybe they're dealing with the same issue because their house does not look anything like those sort of extreme cases?

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 10:13

  I think if they've seen that television show, they know that it could end up that way. That seems to be the universal response. It's like, I don't want to end up like that. Or it's, you know, it's not as bad as that of people that have the awareness to say it's not as bad as that are usually not someone with hoarding challenges, by the way, like there could be chronic disorganization, which is different than hoarding. So I guess I could take a second to say what I find, the easiest way to explain the difference is, is with hoarding, it's like a stuffed salad, where you've got socks with notebooks with food wrappers, with glasses, with earrings with hangers, where when it's kind of disorganization, usually, it's a little bit more categorize than that, you might have a room full of stuff, but it's all old clothes, and shoes, and some coats, you know, in, but they're all jumbled. But it's not this stuff, salad that you get with the hoarding, interesting, what is it that leads to the stuffed salad, it's just a way of going through the environment almost with like blinders that it's so fascinating to watch someone with hoarding challenges when you're in their space, because they put something to the side, and then it's gone, right. And things just end up on top of each other because they're not delineating the different Oh, this is a plate, I should put the plate here so that I don't forget, you know, you've at least put maybe all your utensils at least in a similar place or you know, there, but things just kind of you watch it, it's called churning that behavior where they're going through their stuff without actually making decisions and that churning. So I learned that very early on working with someone with paperwork, they had to work with me, because DCFS was on the case, the social worker discovered the conditions in the home, I would do it differently now. And I would do more to address the children the child's experience, because now I know more. But at the time, I didn't, but I was in the home and working on bills. And what I decided was I would put the bills in plastic bags by type in the gallon size bags. And we made a filing system of bags, because the person with hoarding challenges would just pull up paper and it would spread everywhere. And it would get lost in into piles because it just would all turn into the salad, right? The lettuce is everywhere, in between the olives and the carrot and everything else. But by having one little bag at a time, it didn't go as far or she could see in the bag and just pull out one or two items and put them back in and it helped things to not get what do I undo the work that we had done like in between appointments.

  KC Davis 12:48

  What's interesting is that when I think of so I'm somebody who because of my ADHD, like experiences, disorganization, and my house is pretty organized now, but it's still kind of messy. But one of the things that I am like hearing when you describe that is like, when I come to a room that's maybe like a doom room or a doom pile where everything's kind of all mixed together. And I want to organize it. The first step is like, pulling everything out and spreading it out and churning through everything. Because I'm like, I'm mentally trying to like understand what's there understand what do I need, understand what it is. But then I move on to like the second phase of that, right, which is making decisions about what I need or where it needs to go. That doesn't seem like a foreign thing to like churn. And like I understand that, but it's almost like people get stuck there. Yes. Like it just starts looping. You know what I mean? Like, that just starts looping and they can't move forward to the categorization. Yeah, and I know this, like, I've listened to people on the shows and stuff talk about how it's almost like this inability to really make decisions about what is important and what isn't, because it seems like everything's important.

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 14:05

  Yes. And I've worked with clients before too, that they, you can really see that they don't know what to prioritize. And so I'm going to add colored paper to this or colored marker to this and make it more important, but then when everything in the room has all the different colors on it, then nothing's important again. And so teaching through and figuring out helping someone learn. And I know that some of the techniques that some of the researchers you know, that they've come up with are things like calling an IV probably heard this calling an item a friend. In fact, I think I've seen done post on that with your kids like with their toys, is it a friend? Is it an acquaintance or is it family and helping to teach how to feel about this stuff and how to prioritize it. So I wanted to talk about children because one of the things that has been interesting with my channel, you know, learning you kind of talked about

  KC Davis 15:00

  The difference between individual psychology and community psychology and I kind of heard a parallel to that because I am so used to one on one, talking with someone and kind of explaining concepts to them and tailoring those wording to that person to having this large audience where you have so many different people in the audience. And what I've been talking about care and self care and care tasks, particularly about space, it's been really interesting to try and figure out the way to talk about that that is honoring to two different types of demographics at the same time. And one is that person or that parent who is like, let's take hoarding, for example, who is hoarding? who is struggling, who needs as we know, like, needs compassion, and needs skills, and to whom shame will send them further down the spiral. And I know that children that were traumatized or neglected in hoarding environments are listening, and they so desperately want and need to hear. That was wrong, you deserved better, you know, they should have done anything possible to get that help to make sure you were safe. And it's interesting to know, both of those people are listening. And how do you validate and help and have compassion to both demographics? Because sometimes it feels like, you know, in order to validate children, you have to be like, yeah, that was that was the most screwed up thing that ever happened. And then, of course, somebody who's listening and just hoarding is now kind of falling apart, because they're like, Great, I'm damaging everyone. Why do I even try. And I'm curious if you can kind of speak to your experience and with learning about the effects it has on children, and what the impact on children is,

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 16:47

  I've spent a lot of time over the past couple of years with the director of the minor and youth initiative of the children of Hoarders 501 C three is a nonprofit. And what I've learned from her is, they're just trying to raise awareness that it can be traumatic for children. And just being able to bring that up and talk about it is really helpful to be able to acknowledge it. And if there's someone that can be in that child's life, to provide a different kind of role model, if that child can seek out or the teenager that's watching you know it, helping them find someone, maybe it's going to the friend's house, or, you know, another family member or teacher or somebody. So we're Trisha with the two of us and her organization. They're trying to raise awareness with social workers, with coaches trying to work on how to get that word out there that if they people can learn to identify, I'm talking to a child that might be living in a house that is experienced has hoarding going on, but I can't do anything, because I'm just the soccer coach. But this is how I can help this child maybe in being aware of things that can help that child be get past some of the and be a stronger, more resilient little person, but then the parent because you can't necessarily get in and make a change. And then the parents and I guess I have in my head from caucus I listened to with you a couple of weeks ago, that just the parent just they might not be able to acknowledge it at that point. But just if they can, and know that their child can see them, making that effort to make a little bit of a change. But that's not always realistic, those two things are gonna happen at the same time.

  KC Davis 18:41

  I think that's really important. Because you know, if all you've ever been exposed to are like the hoarding shows, it really does feel like, okay, what the option is to fix this problem. You know, hire all these people get all these people on site, clean everything out, like make sure they have a safe place. And in reality, like you said, the soccer coach, the next door neighbor, the teacher, the person that is coming in contact with a child that's living in maybe a hoarded environment, they don't have those resources, they can't make those things and it can feel so powerless to go okay, as I'm thinking like, even as a therapist, if I have a client that is struggling with hoarding, and I know, they're small children, and I'm going okay, well, I don't have like the resources of a hoarding show. But the idea that there are small things we can do to mitigate impact, and even as a therapist thinking like there are, there could be a harm reduction approach that can still be honoring and helpful and, you know, that's something that I run into a lot when people are listening to me is we get so stuck on these all or nothing black and white thinking that sometimes you'll hear someone say, oh my god, the idea that I can just do one dish. And I'm just thinking to myself, you know, if I'm sitting in an environment that there's a lot of hoarding going on, and I'm Thinking, the only option to help my child is I have to figure out how to fix all of this. When in reality, like maybe there's some more reachable goals in regards to that child's room.

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 20:16

  And things that don't focus on the stuff, like the one kind of occupation that's just starting to come into the conversation now is occupational therapy, in part because they're the ones who maybe you can get insurance to cover. But what an occupational therapists can do is to come in and make sure that they're you won't fall down because of the way this is set up. And they don't look at organizing and sorting. And they're looking at how can I make it so that you can walk to the bathroom safely, and use the sink and place this glass here and it won't fall over? And so bringing them into the conversation now is a nice neutral option that's starting to gain awareness. So that way, it's not just focusing on you got to get rid of all this, it's how can we make it safer, and more functional for you. And so if they could think about it that way, to help the child, you don't want things, the pile to fall on them, for example, you know, the piles get high and they get tumbling. And so what can we do to just rearrange that, so that you can walk through here without twisting your body.

  KC Davis 21:21

  And I like what you said about like, if that child can see that parent, just making an effort, because a lot of times when I speak to children that have gone through really any kind of, especially in neglectful environment, obviously, like, no matter what living in a hoarded environment is going to cause distress to a person because it's just not functional. And it's hard to live in. But there's always this layer of pain that really goes even deeper than that with a child where they go, like, my mom didn't care enough, she didn't see. And I know as a mom, like when we struggle, it's really like I've never had a struggle where I've thought my children aren't worth it. But I also know from my background, with addiction, and with other sort of disorders like that, that as a child, what you feel like is, if I was good enough, if I was worthy enough, this person would be able, like this person would make me more important than this struggle. And

  I think we can't underestimate the impact that a child observing a parent, just try. Even if it doesn't change the function, the environment, you know, what I mean? Like, the amount, the like, what's the term that we use for like, it's like, when someone experiences trauma, there are factors that can like mitigate the harm of that trauma. I don't know, everyone's listening to this screaming at at the radio. Oh, and I can't think of it. But anyways, you don't I mean, like, I think that can't be understated is like, even if you feel hopeless to change, like, it can be a huge change to your child to just observe that messaging of you are worth it. I am trying, here's a small thing that I'm doing.

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 23:03

  When it comes to reporting where it's really severe, they might not be ready to do that yet. But even just thinking about it, like I've learned a lot about stages of readiness, and even just becoming aware that you need to do something, that means that the next step is maybe planning to do something. And then the next step is doing something. So even if you're not doing something yet, keep thinking about it. Keep sitting in that space of maybe I should be doing something because that's progress, if you've gone from not doing anything, to just thinking about it, because that's the only place you can go from Yeah,

  KC Davis 23:38

  that's great advice. Because I think sometimes when we think about changing and we don't we end up failing on that stage, because we think, Well, I'm thinking about it, but I'm not doing it What a piece of junk I am, I shouldn't like I don't even know what I'm kidding myself. And then we go back into kind of a denial. When in reality, like of the stages of change, the first stage is thinking about changing. And so I love your encouragement to No, no, stay there, stay there, stay there, that's good. It's good to be there. Don't beat yourself up that you're not the next one yet. Stay there because that you have to be there in order to get to the next one, right.

  So I'm wondering if we can close with maybe a couple of pieces of like practical advice or moves. I would love if you can remember any of the practical things that the organization was talking about for like what you can do for a child that you notice is in a hoarding environment. Oh, right. So you want to give them a way to talk about what's going on and they may not be able to identify what's going on. So one of the things that we're working on is this sort of icebreaker worksheet for people in the community to use when they think that might be something that's going on. And it so it's questions like, What is it like where you sleep? You know, tell me about

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 25:00

  Your sleeping environment because in a situation where they're scoring, their child is probably not in their own bedroom with a door, they can close and sleeping on a bed. They're probably in the couch in the living room Surrett. And so those questions about, like, what is that? Like? What is sleeping like? Or do you often run late for things because the parent might not be able to get coordinated with their schedule to get and that's, then we that's a general one, but they all impact and add up over a period of time, or can you not have appliances fixed in your home? Because you can't let anyone in? I mean, we didn't really talk about secrecy and shame and all that. But you know, that's a whole other thing. But so being able to just kind of in an almost roundabout way, you know, a asking questions about the conditions of the home without pointing fingers without saying, you just be like, are you able to use the stove or the bath and kind of going through those questions as an assessment or wait up an icebreaker to start the conversation. And that way, you can learn a little bit about what their daily experiences like? Well, I can imagine, like, even something as simple as, like bringing a child a lunch, you know, that like they don't have a sanitary environment to prepare food or, you know, like the fridge hasn't been opened and so long. Like, I think sometimes, as people, we're not very good dealing with the powerlessness that we can feel in the face of somebody else's pain that we can't fix. Well, I'll just say it's easier to just kind of shut down than to wade into it and do the one thing that you can do, and just learn to deal with the hopelessness. And I worked as a before and after school care director for a few years, recently, in addition to organizing, and one of the things I noticed was sometimes in schools, like a child who is not prepared for school is not ready, their backpack is a mess, their desk is a mess, they get picked on or the teacher, they're always in trouble. Instead of asking, why is that child? That way? Why are they coming unprepared? What maybe is going on in the house? How can I teach that child rather than expect them to know because it may be that no one's teaching them? So your videos about cleaning? And people I think they even at were asking you like, can you just show us how to clean because we no one ever taught us? Right? So being if you're coming into contact with a child who isn't coming prepared, is there something you can teach them, because sometimes don't have hoarding parents have to be their own parent. But with those skills they can be they can learn to do those things and do their own laundry, and make their own lunch and some of those things, but they don't know they can. But if someone gives them those tools, to teach them how then it's easier for them to be more resilient later when they're adults. And they come with those skills.

  KC Davis 27:50

  I love the schools that I've seen that have put in like a hygiene closet, where a student can come in and get a bottle of shampoo, they can come in early and get their hair brushed and braided. Because it's not just hurting like you just really don't know where students are coming from and to have a safe place for them to go. Get ready before they go into class where they're not experiencing that peer bullying or teasing or just that spotlight that goes on them. I think that's a great also like community led thing. Like if you are associated with a public school, if you live near a public school, if you're looking for a way to be involved with your child's school, I think having something like that can make a big change for all sorts of children. Okay, what about somebody who's listening and they're going, Okay, this is me, this is me. And I've been needing to reach out for help, like, Do you have any little actionable pieces about reaching out for help? Like, who do they even call about that? Because obviously, not everybody, you know, do I call an organizer? Do I call therapists do I call? We're like, what do I call?

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 28:49

  Right? Well, that's really the million dollar question, right? What are you ready to call like, are you ready to just tuck in call therapists and you have access to that kind of support, and you can pay for that and how that would work for you does that sound appealing? Um, it doesn't have to be an organizer to start like it doesn't. It can be an occupational therapist to start, you know, to help me if you're worried you're gonna fall and hurt break your hip or something. Starting with an organizer, sometimes you have to make sure that that person is trained. And they know so you call a few people and talk and see how they I get referrals more often than not from other organizers in my area, because they know they can't ethically do and help a person that calls and let's see, so you see what you're comfortable with what sounds like something but one of the things you also might think about is what can you do? Maybe there's you can't do anything about the stuff right now because you're not ready but you could do something for your financial health. You could change your Amazon shopping habits or your QVC shopping habits and take that credit card off of the account and slow the roll of the stuff coming in. That you know you're not going to let out could be one thing that's like, Okay, well I could do that I could do something with financial and get control of that, or maybe social, you know, you want to be able your daughter won't allow the kids to come over, because maybe there's one room that you could get to where you could agree that it would be safe to have the grandkids come over or a friend come over to your fixing your social health.

  KC Davis 30:21

  And I will say this, I don't, in general have a lot of faith in CPS, because of historically how biased they can be. But I do know, and there have been times where you know, me or someone I work with, because we are mandatory reporters, if we find out about an abusive or neglectful environment, and there are definitely some stages of hoarding, that would be that would be included in that we are mandated to call the state and we could lose our license if we don't, and what I've seen for so this is kind of a note for professionals as well. But what I've seen work well when you have to make that mandatory reporting, but you, you know, oh, God, this is gonna really sever the relationship, this is going to bring all of these, like worse things onto this person is to reach out to that person, and just be honest with them and say, here's the situation, here's what I have to do, here's what I think we can do together to mitigate the most harm and get the most help, which is to have that person if they're willing to join you on that call, to be able to say, I've talked with my therapist, she's told me she has to call and to be honest, I'm hoping you can help me.

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 31:31

  And the other thing communities can do is get the ATA the American Disability Act, invoke that, because that gives you more time, if the city saying you have to do this in two weeks, so no, this person cannot actually do that in two weeks, because you can see they have this disability. And but and that's another new way of approaching. And so it can take give them six months instead of two weeks. And that awareness is increasing in communities as well.

  KC Davis 31:57

  Thank you for mentioning that. But yeah, but as a professional, again, it's not like some Well, this is definitely not going to be harmful to you anymore. But it certainly can go a long way, especially in the specific case workers that get assigned to you their impressions coming in it is a little like kind of getting ahead of what might be their bias of you know, how do I need to deal with this? How do I you know, how strict do i It's like, okay, I'm sitting with my client. They're hoping you have the resources to help. They're hoping you can help them and sometimes that first impression can help mitigate the trauma and the disruption and the harm that can be caused by something like CPS or adult protective services. Well, Leslie, thank you so much. This has been a really great conversation. I appreciate you just jumping on with me and winging it with me. I will link some of the things that you mentioned.

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 32:48

  Thank you for having me.

  KC Davis 32:49

  Awesome.

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai