Last night I watched ‘My New Brain’, a Cutting Edge programme on Channel 4.  It focused on Simon, a young man who had suffered a catastrophic brain injury while at Newcastle University on a night out.  The programme followed his time in hospital (where he was in a coma for 5 weeks), then in a transitional brain injury rehabilitation residential centre and then moving to a supported living flat.

It was interesting seeing his time in the rehab centre because it was similar to the rehab centre I have visited in Birmingham and I recognised some of the sessions, for example, rehabilitation cooking sessions and orientation sessions.

The most interesting (and lump in my throat!) part was seeing Simon with his younger brothers and mum. It was clear that his personality had changed significantly as a result of the brain injury, which in turn had a massive effect on his relationship with his family. Changes in personality, to varying degrees, are a very common effect of brain damage.  But Simon’s family were so supportive and brave in dealing with this.

There was poignant footage of Simon’s younger brother helping him to get changed for bed and brush his teeth (it really was a case of back to square one) and then in contrast Simon told us how he had punched his brother one day simply because he couldn’t manage his own anger and frustration.

In summary, the programme was a moving insight into life after brain injury and, for me, a look into what many of my clients and their families have to learn and live with since their accidents.  I’d definitely recommend watching it.

It's been a busy week for me already! I’ve been speaking to lots of clients about progress with their cases and attempts to secure interim payments for them. Interim payments can help to pay for therapy, case management input and also help with day to day living which can become difficult when a client can no longer work because of the injuries they sustained in their accident. Interim payments may not be possible in every case but we try our best. When we do get interim payments, there is nothing better than seeing the positive effect on our clients, when they get the support they need, or are able to access rehabilitation or treatment, or even move into a new and properly adapted home.

I also visited a brain rehabilitation centre based in West Heath in Birmingham this week. I met people living there and we worked on a newsletter together. More on that in a future blog!

Hello again
 

I would like to tell you about a conference that I went to on 22 July 2010 in Birmingham. Myself and colleagues in Irwin Mitchell’s Client Liaison Team gave a presentation, mainly about our cases and the type of work that we do. We feel that we all Make A Difference  (MAD for short!) by not just arranging rehabilitation for our clients but also by acting as their advocate  ‘…to listen, take notes and help the patient communicate, understand, remember and cope with an often confusing process’.

My colleague Sue Swales from Leeds described the aims of our team:

• A specialist service offered to those who have suffered serious personal injury especially head injuries
• Ideally we are involved from the early stages of a head injury claim to help gather information to help move the claim forward
• Ensure that needs are identified and met by accessing services and support available
• Maximise the client’s experience of the legal process

Helena Bryant from Birmingham and I presented one of our cases to show that rehabilitation really does work for our clients and Caroline Trinder from London discussed the other activities we are involved in such as charity work, rehabilitation training, working with rehabilitation providers, attending conferences and setting standards. Despite all the hard work though, the job satisfaction that we receive from successfully rehabilitating our clients is tremendous!

Earlier on this month, the personal injury team in Leeds held a fundraising event to raise money for Hannah House, a respite facility which cares for children with severe disabilities during planned or emergency short break stays.  It is a fantastic place which caters for children with a variety of needs up to the age of 18 years old.

The Bollywood Ball was, I am very pleased and proud to say, a great success.  130 people attended and were treated to Bhangra drummers and dancers, sensational Indian food and a turban tying demonstration (a lot more complicated than you would think)!

As a result of ticket sales, an auction, a raffle and games that were held on the night, we raised a fantastic £10,800 and smashed our fundraising target of £10,000!
 

Hannah House will be using this money to create a sensory garden for their residents to enjoy.  Staff in the team are very eager to help with the construction of the garden and I hope that I will be able to provide further updates abut the project as it develops in the future. 

In my last blog, I said that I would tell you more about my role as a Client Liaison Manager.  The client liaison team was created at Irwin Mitchell to meet the specific needs of clients affected by traumatic brain injury.

As a Client Liaison Manager I am responsible for facilitating the rehabilitation of clients and providing practical support for clients. The legal process can be difficult to follow, especially for those that have sustained a brain injury.

It is not hard to miss appointments due to memory difficulties and some of our clients cannot absorb or action information in the letters that they receive from their legal team and the hospital.  People find themselves in a maze of services that they are unfamiliar with which can be overwhelming following a serious injury. 

Our Client Liaison Managers identify the specific needs of the individual by conducting an assessment initially to identify the support required from hospitals, General practitioners, support workers / carers, social services, rehabilitation units, and to look at aids and equipment or adaptations to property that may be required and assist with benefit applications. 

Each Client Liaison Manager has a medical background and can make sense of these services, explain how they work and interact with each other and provide the support that our clients and their families need.  We are based in our Manchester, Leeds, London and Birmingham offices and we are about to appoint for our Sheffield office.

As well as our service being tailored to meet the needs of our clients we are responsible for working together as a team to revise our standards, protocols and procedures and update our own practices. We also provide teaching and training for our legal colleagues/ support workers/ Headway groups and trainees .

The role is busy and demanding, varied and enjoyable. We never know from day to day what challenges to expect in our role but it’s a great reassurance that Irwin Mitchell offers this for clients with serious injuries.   Our team of Client Liaison Managers are renowned for their understanding and experience of the issues that affect you and your family, we have the qualifications, skills and experience to support you and we know what positive action to take to make a difference.

When I last blogged, our Manchester head injury team were about to host an event for a number of case managers which turned out to be an extremely lively debate enjoyed by all.

Brain injury case managers are often a key element of the support which we are able to arrange for those who have suffered a brain injury. Often, particularly for those who may not be pursuing a compensation claim, knowing how to find and where to turn for information and support can very difficult for those who have suffered a brain injury. Individuals and families easily find themselves immersed in a world that perhaps they do not understand or recognise after brain injury.

With that thought in mind, I wanted to mention the national brain injury charity, Headway whose regional branches provide such support and for further details you might want to take a look at their website.  My fellow team members at Irwin Mitchell help to support our local Manchester group and I am delighted to say that I am helping with the launch of Headway Liverpool which should hopefully take off  by end of this year.  A number of the regional Headway groups can provide information, advice and support and a number also have day centres providing a meeting place for social events and an opportunity to talk to other people who have been affected by a brain injury.

Next week sees Headway, the UK brain injury support charity, launch their Action for Brain Injury Week, which this year focusses upon the information given out by hospitals to patients seen in casualty but discharged with a suspected "minor" head injury.

I'm sure that up and down the country, thousands of patients are seen in busy A+E units every week, are given the right advice and recover without complications after treatment. It's worth remembering that in many units hard working staff do the best they can with the resources that they have, and not every complication can be forseen.

But the beauty and simplicity of Headway's campaign is the simple ask: just use Headway's well presented and carefully researched advice sheet on minor head injury, and give these out to patients before they exit the door. This will put an end to the inconsistent and frankly sometimes inadequate fact sheets used in some hospitals, and at the same time lets people know about the existence and work of Headway. What's wrong with that?

Let's just hope someone is listening!

Hello. I am part of the team in working with our head injury solicitors in Manchester and I am employed as a Client Liaison Manager. My background is medical and I am responsible for representing our clients who have sustained a brain injury, helping them to get access to rehabilitation whilst supporting their families.
 
It’s a pretty familiar scenario in cartoons and sitcoms that a person gets struck on the head, sees stars’ loses their memory and behaves oddly. Then, by chance, another bang on the head instantly restores the person that was injured.
 
In reality, brain injuries take many different forms. Some occur naturally and are difficult to predict or avoid. Haemorrhages, tumours and viral infections can affect us at any age, often without obvious cause. An acquired brain injury (ABI) is not present at birth and the most common type is the result of damage externally, such as a sharp blow to the head.  The chance of sustaining a traumatic brain injury is a lot higher than people think.

People always ask “what happens” when there is a sharp blow to the head because they presume that the skull protects the brain from damage. The skull is amazingly robust but like any other hollow shell it can be smashed and damaged. Even when the skull remains intact, the damage to the brain can be devastating. Our brains have the texture of blancmange and the inside of the skull is soft and rigid. Sudden deceleration such as a hard blow to the head or the head hitting a windscreen at anything over 20mph brings the brain into violent contact with the skull and some parts of it get bruised and torn.
 
A & E departments deal with visible and life threatening injuries and often the “invisible” damage to the brain is given less priority. In the hours and days after a brain injury, bruising leads to swelling and as the brain presses against the skull, blood flow becomes impaired as arteries become damaged. The treatment received during the early hours, days and weeks have a critical impact on the potential for recovery. The long term effects depend on the size and severity of the damage, but given the crucial function of each separate part of the brain, a wide range of impairments or disability may follow.
 
The moral of my story is to look after your brain and please do not take it for granted! It is the most important bit of you so don’t take risks. Wear a safety helmet if doing something hazardous such as cycling, mountaineering or pot holing and always wear a seat belt in a car, even as a passenger. Bones can be mended, flesh can be stitched back together but brains are a lot trickier to fix so please don’t take chances.
 
Irwin Mitchell support’s Headway’s campaign to provide good quality printed information leaflets to A & E departments. Sometimes, little information about what to look out for post injury is given out in A & E following injury to the head so I am personally thrilled that this information will be available to both the injured person and their families as part of my role remit includes educating the client and their families about brain injury. The role of a Client Liaison Manager is extremely rewarding and I look forward to telling you more about it in my next blog.

When a person is injured in an accident and suffers from a brain injury as a result that person’s life is unfortunately all too often irreversibly changed.

Here at Irwin Mitchell we strive to make a difference to our client’s lives by building their legal case to recover compensation for their loss whilst at the same time providing support throughout their rehabilitation (more on this in a later blog!).

One of the areas which are invariably affected when a person suffers a brain injury is that person’s ability to work. One of our head injury lawyers who specialises in acting for clients who live abroad and in claims from accidents abroad is currently acting for a French client, who sustained a head injury in a RTA in the UK.  

He lives and works in France. He is able to work, but has problems with fatigue and dealing with a number of tasks at the same time. This means that he is unable to obtain a job at the level he would have expected, but for the accident and has had difficulty keeping the jobs he has had. Our lawyer’s task is to obtain evidence to prove what job and earnings the client would have had had he not suffered a brain injury.

If the client was working in England, we would be able to obtain statistics and evidence from comparators about the availability of jobs and levels of earnings, without much difficulty and this would probably be sufficient for a judge to make his assessment of the client’s loss of earnings.

However, since the client is in France, it is much more difficult to obtain this type of information and therefore our lawyer has decided that an employment expert, who could access relevant information in France, would be of great assistance.
 
It can be very difficult to persuade English judges to allow employment expert reports these days but, because the client is based in France, we consider that this is a case in which an employment expert’s report is crucial to ensure that our client is adequately compensated for his loss of earnings.

We are therefore making an Application to the court for permission to rely on such a report and hope to persuade the judge to allow one to be commissioned. Understanding the needs of a brain injured client is crucial to getting the best result for them. Getting the right evidence and fighting for our client’s case is all part of the daily work of our lawyers.

Hello to everyone. I’m a solicitor specialising in brain injury here in the London Office. I will be contributing to the blog regularly keeping you all up to date with our activities.

Here at Irwin Mitchell we are very lucky to be involved with many very worthwhile charities. One of those charities is Headway – the brain injury organisation. Headway is a remarkable charity supporting and assisting people with brain injury and their families both nationally by campaigning for better services for people with brain injury and through local meeting groups all over the country.

Here in London there are 6 Headway groups offering services including day centres, therapies such as occupational therapy, carer support, social re-intergration and community outreach to name but a few. Obviously to enable these crucial services to continue fundraising is extremely important.

It is for this reason that recently 8 dancing queens from our London office donned fluorescent vests, leg warmers and sweat bands and took part in East London Headway’s 8 Hour Dance Marathon(!). East London Headway are a very active local group providing a hub for the community offering a wide range of services such as counselling, physiotherapy, art/music therapy and complementary therapies. With the efforts of our dancing queens and lots of other enthusiastic ‘shimmiers’ Headway managed to raise £15,000 for their ongoing projects. There is even photographic evidence of the dancer’s efforts. A good time had by all and money raised a fantastic charity at the same time!