Brain Injury Awareness week runs from 9-15 May 2011. During this time, many organisations and charities will be undertaking numerous events with a view to highlighting the issues around acquired brain injuries.

Last week I visited some of the regional branches of Headway, the brain injury charity, to learn more about what they do for their service users and what they are planning for brain injury awareness week. The staff and service users of both Headway Devon, based in Exeter, and Headway Bristol, located on the Frenchay Hospital site in Bristol, were extremely helpful in giving an insight into what they do on a daily basis.

Headway Devon also has centres in Honiton, Tiverton, Exmouth, Torquay and Okehampton, so covering the entirety of Devon. Each of the centres offers one or two days each week when people with acquired brain injuries can meet, socialise and benefit from the services the centres provide. The centres are supported by full time Headway staff – usually two staff members at each session - and also benefit from volunteers (often university students). They have formal placements including those on a youth offenders project, where young people who have been involved in incidents where they may have caused such injuries to someone else, attend to learn about the impact of brain injury on someone’s life, often acting as a successful deterrent from reoffending.

The Exeter centre, which I visited, provides a relaxed and welcoming environment. It very much focuses on increasing independence – most service users travel to and from the centre by their own means – and provides therapeutic and social benefits to the service users through such means as art, photography and drama, many of which are provided by volunteers.

Headway Devon is one of the only Headway groups to offer services to children, a valuable service which allows children with brain injuries to grow in confidence and facilitates integration with non-injured kids, especially at school.

Headway Bristol was one of the first Headway branches – existing even before Headway UK was established. Through negotiations with Frenchay Hospital, they managed to secure land on which to build a tailor made centre and raised the funds to build it themselves. The result is, similarly, a friendly, welcoming place for the users to attend.

The unit at Frenchay is open every day of the week, providing services to people of differing levels of ABI depending on the session attended. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday sessions are more focussed at the unit and a huge variety of activities are provided ranging from practical work such as learning via computers, speech and language and art sessions to games and gardening. A second group is run at Withywood, providing services to those service users based in North Somerset.

The Monday and Friday sessions provide an opportunity for those further down their rehabilitation path to access the community and again, independence is key with focus on using local transport and planning their own activities. The opportunities available to the centre users is ever changing and it was clear that the staff work extremely hard to keep things fresh, interesting and challenging for those attending. There are opportunities for people to get out and meet other people in a similar position to them and even to go on holiday, with the branch offering one UK based and one foreign holiday each year.

Both Headway branches also offer outreach services to clients throughout their geographic areas ensuring that everyone’s needs are met.

Overall, it was clear to me from both visits that Headway provide exceptional services to those who have sustained acquired brain injuries and the work done by these groups is invaluable.

At Irwin Mitchell we do lots of charity work and work with voluntary organisations, universities, colleges and more outside our day-to-day work representing seriously injured clients – it makes us very busy but it’s great fun and very rewarding!

One recent ‘extra-curricular’ activity for me was a Mock Trial which I organised with two of my colleagues from our Birmingham office for The College of Law in Birmingham.  The aim was to show students how interesting and rewarding it can be to represent people who have sustained head injuries and serious orthopaedic injuries in accidents. 

The Mock Trial was a great success.  We gave students an insight into the complexity of our work and the commitment involved in bringing all of our cases to successful conclusions for our clients.  The students gave us really good feedback which was fantastic.

We all know the feeling - the thrill of Christmas and New Year are behind us and the January blues set in as we return to work. Whilst many of us must struggle through the deep winter days, numerous others will have the excitement of a holiday to look forward to as they whisk themselves off to the snowy slopes of the Alps or perhaps the Pyrenees.

Skiing and snowboarding holidays, ever popular, have seen increasing numbers over the past decade and with them, increasing numbers of accidents. Whilst broken limbs may be the worst injury people contemplate when launching themselves downhill, each of them is also putting themselves at risk of a serious head injury. This issue was a highlighted by the death of actress Natasha Richardson following a skiing incident in Canada in 2009.

There is a lot of argument over the protection a helmet affords a skier or snowboarder from sustaining serious head injuries with evidence for both sides of the argument. A survey by Essential Travel, who have teamed up with national brain injury charity Headway this year to try and encourage helmet use, suggests that wearing a helmet could reduce the risk of a serious head injury by as much as 35% however, other reports suggest statistics as to the safety afforded by helmets is skewed. Numerous websites such as www.ski-injury.com consider the arguments in detail and make for interesting reading.

So far, no conclusive evidence has been put forward as to whether or not wearing a helmet whilst on the slopes will make a significant difference to the risk of head injury and it remains very much a personal choice. Much like an unstoppable avalanche, the debate rolls on……

Happy New Year to everyone.

The Christmas period drink-driving campaigns are now over but the ‘don’t drink and drive’ message is still crucial.  In 2009, 11,990 reported casualties occurred as a result of a drunk driver.  Of course this was over the whole year, not just around Christmas and New Year.  Perhaps complacency creeps in later in the year.

I’ve recently seen a study carried out by the AA / Populus which found that the most common excuses for drink driving heard were:

• "It's only down the road" – 60%
• "I've had food, so that will have soaked the alcohol up" – 56%
• "It's been a while since the last drink" – 45%
• "There won't be any traffic around" – 28%
• "I won't get caught" – 27%

These are worrying findings which show a complacency, lack of knowledge and disregard for safety amongst some drivers.  In cases where we work for clients who have had a brain injury in a road traffic collision we come across a considerable number of drivers who were under the influence of alcohol when an accident occurred.  Simply saying no to a drink when you will be driving is an easy way of looking after your own safety and the safety of everyone else on the roads.

A lot of my work involves accidents at work which cause brain injury, sometimes because of lack of head protection, sometimes from falls from height, and from heavy things falling onto workers.

Where there has been an accident at work I will often refer to the Health and Safety Executive website. It’s a really useful website for anyone interested in health and safety issues and there is also some light relief on there in the short articles titled of ‘Myth of the Month’.

The aim of this section is to dispel the scare stories about health and safety and reinforce the central aim of health and safety: to use common sense to protect people and prevent death or serious injury. So the myth of the month for July was dispelling the rumour that the Health and Safety Executive had banned candy floss which gave me a chuckle on Monday morning!

Last week, I attended a seminar that was organised by the Child Brain Injury Trust (also known as CBIT). It was aimed at solicitors that specialise in the field of brain injury.

CBIT is an organisation that provides information, support and training to anybody that has been affected by a childhood acquired brain injury. This can be the child themselves, their families or the people that support them. They help people to come to terms with what has happened to them and to deal with their new "hidden disability"; the child that sustained a brain injury might look like they have fully recovered from their accident, but the reality is that they often have subtle but complex needs, which can be life changing in nature.

The seminar was fantastic and covered a wide variety of topics. Aside from the more technical aspects of the litigation process, there was a very interesting session about the impact that a brain injury has upon a child's education and another talk from a case manager about the impact that a brain injury has on a child as they are growing up.  

If you would like any more information about CBIT, please visit the CBIT website 

At Irwin Mitchell in Leeds, we are supporting a charity called SNAPS (Special Needs and Parental Support). SNAPS is a Leeds based charity set up by and for parents who have children with a disability. 

When we initially met with SNAPS, they told us that they wanted to say a big "thank you" to some of the people who had made a fantastic contribution to the lives of others. Requests for nominations were sent out to numerous charities and individuals and yesterday, all of the nominees (along with those that had nominated them) were invited to the “Big T Awards” our office in Leeds. The Lord Mayor of Leeds presented the awards to the deserving winners and we also held a "Big T Party" (with cup cakes) to celebrate their success.

The stories behind each of the nominations were fantastic to hear as they had all gone that extra mile to help. It was an absolute pleasure to attend such a fantastic event and I’m already looking forward to next year’s award ceremony!

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.