Support during Action for Brain Injury Week 2019

Head injury brings a huge health challenge in the UK, with up to 1.4 million people presenting at A&E every year, with a head injury. With this in mind, Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust’s Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) service is supporting Action for Brain Injury Week by offering support and highlighting some of the issues around brain injury.

Action for Brain Injury Week is being held from 20-26 May 2019 and Lancashire Care’s Secure ABI Team based at Guild Lodge in Preston is getting involved to help promote awareness brain injury and the support that is available. The secure ABI service at Guild Lodge is the only one of its type in the NHS in the UK. The specialist ABI service provides care to patients who have impairments as a result of an acquired or traumatic brain injury in addition to stroke and other neurological conditions. The aim of the service is to provide excellent, holistic care for individuals with an ABI, with a specialist team providing evidenced based, individualised neuro-cognitive and neuro-behavioural care in a secure setting.  

The service consists of two medium and a low secure care service all of which offer 24 hour secure nursing care and work towards reintegration back into the local areas. The services work to provide treatments such as occupational therapy, psychology and nursing. Together with input from speech and language therapy and physiotherapy these treatments contribute towards personal goals set by the patients to reduce the level of impact the injury has on their independence. Occupational Therapists help services users to develop transferable skills and provide structure into their routine during their time within the service

Dr Czarina Kirk at Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust said:

“Our service is unique within the NHS and we have used our experience to promote the need for such specialist interventions. We have engaged with Parliamentary groups and continue to attend the Criminal Justice ABI Interest Groups at the House of Lords which seeks to ensure people with a brain injury are supported at every stage of the Criminal Justice Pathway and indeed exploring prevention interventions.

“We are often asked to attend conferences to demonstrate to the ABI professional community the nature and breadth of the care we provide. Our model of care has patients at the core and each of these are unique in terms of their brain injury and rehabilitation needs. Our service depends on an integrated team of trained professionals and professionals who are creative and compassionate.”

Jason Drake, Modern Matron said:

“Our care model offers a high staff to patient ratio in order to facilitate rehabilitation coaching. Being a unique service in the NHS does bring its own challenges, but the rewards in offering such highly unique and specialised nursing care is great. As part of the week we have organised a special event to celebrate and recognise the fantastic work that the service users and staff do within our ABI service.”

For more information about ABI services please visit www.lancashirecare.nhs.uk/ABI.