Series 3 trailer and chat with hibi co-founder Sam milliken-smith

~music - “Wake me up, loud as clouds..all my love for you. You’re a dreamer, I am too. it’s f**king normal we could rule the world”...

Lauren  0:25 

Hello, it's Lauren and Rina here,

Rina  0:28 

We're back!

Lauren  0:31 

We just wanted to let you know that series three is coming together. And will be making its way into your ears imminently. And we have a whole host of really incredible guests and conversations to share with you, including a dad who is trying to grow a SEN dad network, and episode where we'll talk to a therapist, and a chat with another podcaster on working the nine to five while also SEND parenting and in her case also is doing a podcast. Sounds a bit familiar.

Rina  1:00 

But while we have your attention, we both wanted to let you know some very, very exciting news. For the last year, we've been supporting the team behind the new SEN parenting app, Hibi, who have kindly agreed to sponsor this series. We have always been a team of sand mums working on the pod alongside all the other shit that comes to life, you know, work parenting living, and we have never wanted to lose that authenticity and ultimate reason for doing the pod, bringing SEN parents together sharing experiences forming a community, which is exactly why we agreed to partner with Hibi, ultimately Hibi was created to make our SEN lives easier by providing a space that everyone in our children's care has easy access to them, their needs, their appointments, their hospital letters, and more.

Lauren  1:42 

And it doesn't just end there. The app also has so many other aims that are so closely aligned with ours. It made so much sense for us to partner with Hibi.

Rina  1:52 

But what better way to explain to you lovely listeners what hibi is all about them the co founder himself. Hello, Sam.

Sam  1:59 

Hi, everyone. Hi, how are you? I'm doing very, very well. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

Rina  2:05 

Amazing. Well, we'll jump right in. Can you tell us a little bit about you and your involvement with the SEN community?

Sam  2:11 

Absolutely. So I'm one of the co founders at Hibi. My background has been in the world of healthcare for several years with the NHS and other organisations but personally I grew up with close friends and family in the SEND community. My mum is an occupational therapist, specialising in epilepsy and learning disability support. And when I moved to London several years ago, I began working for a wonderful charity here called KEEN focusing on supporting children with developmental differences.

Lauren  2:41 

Amazing. Wow. So where did the idea for Hibi first come about?

Sam  2:45 

So what I was seeing through some of those experiences was that although of course every child is different. For a lot of families, there are often some shared needs and parents, siblings, other family members often become their child's care manager, coordinator, and or navigator. And without any prior training tools or resources, they are thrown into that situation. And sometimes that can be quite an overwhelming thing. And what we wanted to do with Hibi was build something that could really support and empower families and let parents get back to being parents rather than overwhelmed administrators or caregivers.

Rina  3:28 

So tell us a little bit about the app and how it works. And how does it make parenting SEND children easier?

Sam  3:35 

Sure. So we aim to provide families with support in two areas through our app. The first of those is really like a selection of care management tools. We know that a lot of families today are using a mix of paper folders, Excel spreadsheets, they might have put together Trello boards, WhatsApp groups, and more. Our app is providing families with access to tailor made tools to allow you and your care team to store track and share the information that is important to your loved one, from medications to symptoms, appointments and more. And then the second thing that we aim to provide families with is really access to trusted guidance. There's some amazing resources out there. But for a lot of families, it can take quite a while to find where they are. We have a whole bank of expert tailored content to the SEND community and the ability for our users to submit questions to the community to be answered by our advisors as well

Lauren  4:34 

Who are those advisors then that answer those kinds of questions?

Sam  4:38 

We're really lucky to have an amazing group of people around us so they range from specialists in children's physiotherapy to parents who have lived experience navigating the system to paediatricians themselves. So yeah, we're very fortunate that we have a great team around us.

Lauren  4:58 

So you've described some of the house The app works and what it gives you access to, but just can you give me some like, like layman terms descriptions of how people would use it.

Sam  5:08 

Yeah of course. So in the early days of designing Hibi, one of the things we would so often hear would be how families were having to constantly retell their story. So one of the things that we see our users using our app for is our digital care passport, which is something you can set up once and share forever, that provides an overview about your child, who they are, their likes, their dislikes, but also an overview of their medical history, their medications, things that might be needed, for somebody who's meeting a child for the first time to know about, and you can then have that in your pocket to share whenever needed as a secure PDF. So that's one use case. Another use case we often heard from families is how often keeping track of all of your appointments or all of the medications that your child is going to have, how overwhelming that can be, particularly when you might be taking your child one day as a mum, and then your partner is the other day or a care assistant is helping in the home that afternoon. So with our platform, you can invite those key caregivers to the same place. So they can collaborate, they can keep track of all these things. And then if you ever need to go back and look at how, how and when medications were administered, and how perhaps that affected sleep or seizures, you have that logged in one place that you can then analyse, export, look back on as well to try and help give people the control and the information and the tools that they need to best care for their child.

Lauren  5:58 

How is Hibi making sure that this doesn't become like another thing for parents?

Sam  6:42 

That's something that we we've been thinking about since day one, because the last thing we want to do is add more stuff to people's already busy life. So the whole premise of Hibi is actually to try and take all of those million and one things that are floating around in somebody's head or on their to do list or wherever it might be stored, and put it into a really accessible, streamlined platform that helps you feel in control of managing all of your child's care.

Rina  7:08 

Amazing. Are there any other perks to the Hibi app? And what kind of what do you see the app doing eventually? what's your what's your ultimate goal?

Sam  7:19 

Yeah, I the vision really is then to try and create something that can be there for families in all sorts of caregiving situations, but the only way we can do that is by by working with the community. So that's, that's our vision. And one other feature of our app is really about providing that trusted content. So if you are going through the EHCP process, we've got a bank of articles written by experts on that, or if you're on the diagnostic pathway for a condition, whether it be ADHD, autism, or otherwise, we've got content on that that's designed to be there for you. To guide you through that.

Lauren  7:57 

You talked about the fact that you've worked in the NHS and and for the charity and your own personal connection into SEND. But can I dig a bit deeper on that? Like, why why do you want to do Hibi, like what is it that you personally get out of, of developing this app and supporting this community.

Sam  8:19 

So for me, the motivation for Hibi was really to shine a light on a really significant part of society that doesn't get the light shone on it very often, I mentioned my mom's work as an occupational therapist earlier. She works in a charity, whose care home is behind the train station. And you wouldn't know it exists unless you knew somebody who was there as a resident or somebody who worked there. But it's full of amazing people. And I want to take some of the innovation that's happening in other parts of the world and some of the attention that's happening in other parts of the world and build something that can really support that group. To give you another example, the charity I work for here in London, KEEN. We have people turning up on a Saturday who've lived next door to the venue for several years, but only found out last week that it's a service that exists because it's been difficult to spread awareness of the types of things that might be out there. So really, the motivation for Hibi is to try and shine a light on on this group.

Lauren  9:22 

Yeah, and I think I think that that's amazing. And I think the the fact that you are doing it with the community is really something that struck us because you know, you you always worry about some of these things being designed without those who actually using it and part of it and seeing the challenges around it. And at the heart of it. So yeah, it's it really that struck a chord with us and the fact that we've been talking with you Sam for quite some time now and trying to help you know, give our own personal feedback and contribute to helping the Hibi community I think having community At the centre is is, you know, it's clearly something that's really close to our hearts because that's exactly why we wanted to set up the f**king normal podcast. So thank you for what you're doing. It's great.

Sam  10:11 

It's such a pleasure to be part of what you guys are doing. So thanks very much for having me on this. Thank you.

Rina  10:19 

One last question, Sam. Why is it called hibi?

Sam  10:22 

Oh, good question. So Hibi has a reference to an ancient goddess of youth, which is pronounced "Heebee", H E. B E. We weren't for hibi. Nice. And we would love you to check out the app provide any feedback, you might have the app, you can search in the App Store's H i b i and you can email us at any time with thoughts feedback or otherwise on Hello@hibi.health.

Rina  10:52 

And there you have it straight from the man himself. If you'd like to give Hibi a go, download it now from the App Store or Google Play.

Music to play out...

Transcribed by https://otter.ai