Our Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) team have attended an ABI reception in Westminster Palace to meet with local MPs, talk about more support for people with a brain injury, and hear more about the Government’s new ABI strategy.
Catherine Sanderson, Specialist ABI Speech & Language Therapist said: ‘It was a fantastic experience to represent the service and the Trust at such a prestigious event. We felt genuinely listened to by our local MP Tim Farron who discussed our concerns and whose influence can directly impact our clients in Cumbria. It was an opportunity for genuine collaboration with people who could influence policy that can lead to improve the experience of people who have experienced an ABI living in Cumbria.”
Acquired Brain Injury is a leading cause of death and disability affecting more than 1.3 million people and costing £15 billion to the UK economy each year.
Catherine Sanderson added: “The Strategy held a consultative period open to all stakeholders including patients, Next of Kin, professionals, third sector providers and others over the summer of 2022.
Our ABI service contributed in the preparation of a report highlighting relevant issues following ABI. This included health needs, challenges our patients can experience due to housing, benefits, employment, education, rurality, variability in understanding of the disability associated with ABI as well as ways other service providers can support and make reasonable adjustments.
We also publicised the consultative period to patients open to the service at the time as an anonymised, online, or written survey they could submit sharing their experiences to inform the strategy.
This work helped us to articulate to MPs the experiences of our patients in Cumbria who survive ABI and we hope the strategy will further benefit people living with ABI in the future once published.”
The ABI strategy aims to raise awareness of Acquired Brain Injury to support those with ABI and to better inform others of the challenges faced by people living with ABI. This can include accessing support for benefits, return to work, return to driving, housing that fits physical mobility needs and issues with accessing services.
When the strategy is published it will be a useful resource for local commissioning, providers, patients and their families to set out what hopefully will be common sense recommendations to support people living with ABI across the relevant areas highlighted.
The event was held on 10th May at Westminster, organised by Sir Chris Bryant MP for Rhondda who is leading on the Government’s ABI Strategy.