A brain injury rehabilitation centre is helping to shape a national strategy on helping people in recovery.
Calvert Reconnections, in Keswick, is helping to shape the Government’s new national strategy on Acquired Brain Injury by contributing to the recently-launched Call for Evidence.
In December 2021 the Government committed to developing a strategy to improve services for people with ABI. The strategy has been championed by Chris Bryant MP with support from a range of brain injury charities.
Calvert Reconnections’ head of service Claire Appleton said: “We share the Government’s ambition to achieve a step change in the care and support available to people living with ABI so that they have the chance to regain the fullest possible quality of life.
“In particular, we would urge the Government to place greater focus on post-acute rehabilitation, recognise the absence of support for the families of those with ABI, look beyond traditional, therapy-based rehabilitation and recognise that the funding and availability of placement at rehab units for those with ABI is not uniform and remains a postcode lottery.”
Calvert Reconnections has also invited the Minister for Care and Mental Health, Gillian Keegan and Chris Bryant MP, who co-chair the ABI strategy programme board, to visit the centre.
The centre has been running for nearly a year and delivers cognitive and physical rehabilitation strategies alongside daily living and vocational skills within the local community.
To date people have stayed for periods of between six and 24 weeks, with an average stay of 13 weeks.
Of those who have used the service 100 per cent have improved their ability to carry out everyday activities, needed less support when they were discharged, feel greater hope for the future or have improved their sense of positive purpose and direction. Sixty per cent have progressed onto independent living.
Bill Braithwaite QC, trustee at the Lake District Calvert Trust, said: “I’m so delighted about these outcomes, because they justify our faith in this adventurous brain injury rehabilitation programme.
“There is a huge demand for rehab which is more than the common, therapy-based system, which can be dull and dispiriting; over the years I’ve seen so many patients who have either refused to participate, or failed to engage continuously, because they don’t feel the motivation.
“Now that we’re well-established and Covid is retreating, I hope that all those survivors out there and their case managers and lawyers, will come and share with us the wonderful, invigorating, rehabilitation we offer.”
