Nakeisha Dawson-Thompson
A Community Minded Business, Honoring Her Heritage Through Service
story by EMILY BURGESS photos by GREYSON JOHNSTON
Many women are familiar with juggling. Juggling jobs, motherhood and home responsibilities. For Nakeisha Dawson-Thompson, juggling is an art form as she strives to maintain balance in all the facets of her life as a woman in business in the lowcountry.
With a background in nursing and more recently and specifically hospice care, Nakeisha and her cousin Monique Dawson saw a need in the Beaufort area for non-medical home care services for the elderly or those who are unable to care for themselves. After realizing the great need, the cousins decided to start their own company providing these services to the community.
Dawson and Dawson Homecare, LLC was established just a couple of months after the idea was conceived in November 2018. With more than 22 years of experience between them, Nakeisha and Monique were able to successfully get their business up and running quickly to begin serving the Beaufort area to meet a need that no other businesses were.
The mission of Dawson and Dawson Homecare is to provide excellent in home care to the elderly in our community to help them thrive at home safely as long as possible. They provide ADL (assistance with daily living) care such as bathing, getting dressed, changing briefs, meal prep, feeding assistance if needed, errands, laundry and accompanying to appointments. They stand in as the caregivers if there aren’t any or if the caregivers work outside of the home.
Dawson and Dawson homecare also provides 24-hour care or respite care when caregivers, which are most likely family members, go on vacation or need a break from the arduous task of round-the-clock care.
“It can be very overwhelming to take care of a loved one, especially if they have dementia. So sometimes families’ just need a break and take two or three days where we would come in and provide care,” said Nakeisha Dawson-Thompson.
What sets Dawson and Dawson’s services apart is that they provide non-medical homecare. Most other homecare businesses or practices in the Beaufort area are for patients needing ongoing in-home medical attention. The provision of these daily non-medical tasks, which are often burdensome to the elderly when living on their own, affords the elderly in the community to maintain their current living situation in a safe manner.
The business may be in its beginning stages, but Nakeisha and Monique have hit the ground running to frame a foundation and begin building the walls of a unique and much needed service for Beaufort. Within the coming weeks, they will open up their office space in Beaufort and then plan to start the hiring process to add more qualified and licensed staff outside of themselves to reach more people and cover more area.
The services are offered to Beaufort, Hampton, Colleton, and Jasper counties. They modeled the reach of their services by the Medicaid system and are currently working on a certification to accept Medicaid in the hopes to reach high needs areas. Each client is accepted on a case-by-case basis. A qualified staff member will meet with the client to assess and ensure that their needs match up with what Dawson and Dawson can provide.
The idea for the business did not appear out of thin air. Monique was already working as a private duty nurse in the area. Nakeisha was working in hospice and knew that her capacity to continue in hospice was coming to an end. With Monique’s nursing background suited for these services and Nakeisha’s experience with the business side, it made sense for them to explore and pursue opening Dawson and Dawson.
“We have always been community minded. Service is one of my gifts and one of the things that I’ve been blessed with, a heart to serve. With Monique’s experience in the nursing side it just made sense,” said Nakeisha Dawson-Thompson.
It’s rare to find a nurse with experience in the business side of things, but Nakeisha was no stranger to the ins and outs of starting a business. After her oldest daughter struggled throughout middle school, Nakeisha took a job as a school nurse to align her hours with those of her kids and therefore have more targeted time with them. Seeing her daughter thrive during that time with the oversight of a mentor, Nakeisha knew that providing that for other young girls in the community was pivotal for their success in the future.
Three years ago this prompted her to start a non-profit called Gullah Daughters of Purpose, Inc. As a faith-based youth outreach and mentoring program, the vision is to instill in these teen girls the importance of knowing who they are and understanding that the decisions they make now will have an effect on their futures. The program offers classes, outings, summits, community service and one-on-one mentoring to help build people skills, self-esteem, and confidence to become productive women. Gullah Daughters of Purpose has served dozens of local girls since its conception.
The program is open to girls ages 12-18 in the area and was named to honor her heritage that dates back generations in this community. The Gullah language was strong while growing up as she heard her grandparents speaking it and she wanted to celebrate that in a small way.
“Gullah Daughters of Purpose has made me dive into a lot of the business aspects. Non-profits are very different than for-profits. You have to be so much more business attentive in the for-profit, but the business side of Dawson and Dawson did not scare me,” said Nakeisha Dawson-Thompson.
Before deciding to start Dawson and Dawson, Nakeisha had met with a company looking to hire in the area for in-home care, but after meeting with them for a potential job, she knew she couldn’t work for them.
“I saw that it was more about money and numbers and with them not being a local company, they aren’t invested in the community we have. This could be my grandmother and that’s not how I want her cared for. This is really how it started. We knew we should do this for our community. We were both born and raised here and our family goes back generations right here,” Nakeisha-Dawson Thompson said.
One goal that Dawson and Dawson Homecare has is to be the go-to, non-medical in-home care provider for the area. They are starting the process to work closely with local doctor’s offices, creating a referral system as doctors encounter patients that would greatly benefit from in-home care services. Referrals can also come via their website as a self-referral.
As she and Monique continue to get Dawson and Dawson off the ground and grow their client base, Nakeisha still works in hospice on top of running Gullah Daughters of Purpose and is a mother to five kids ranging in age from 8 to 20 and in recent weeks was promoted to Mimi with the birth of her first grandchild.
“I do it all with a lot of help. My husband is very supportive. My girls are with me for a lot of this. They have been helping us paint our new office. I hope that they would see that I have a heart for people and to serve and will walk that road as well,” Nakeisha Dawson-Thompson said.
