Rehab access for brain-injured ‘a lottery’
THOUSANDS of people who suffer brain injuries each year are not getting timely rehabilitation in their own communities.
Many who are discharged from hospitals struggle to find specialist support services to help them relearn some of the skills that were lost as a result of their injury, said Barbara O’Connell, chief executive of Acquired Brain Injury Ireland.
Every year an estimated 19,000 people suffer acquired brain injuries, including those who suffered strokes, falls, traffic accidents, or assaults.
There are parts of the country that do not have a clinical team with the expertise to meet the full rehabilitation needs of people with acquired brain injury.
“Despite all the evidence about the benefits of neuro-rehabilitation, the services remain extraordinarily under-resourced. Access to rehabilitation remains something of a lottery — it should be a right, not a request,” Ms O’Connell said.
With Brain Awareness Week starting on March 15, she told the Sunday Independent it is vital that a fully integrated clinical team be set up and funded in each of Ireland’s nine Community Health Organisation areas.
“Younger people with acquired brain injury are too often unnecessarily and prematurely placed in nursing homes because community-based rehabilitative support is under-resourced,” she said.
Research by the Disability Federation of Ireland and Dublin City University in 2018 found that 1,500 people living in nursing homes were aged from 18 to 65 and the largest cohort of those had a brain injury.
Ms O’Connell was a senior occupational therapist when her brother, Peter Bradley, suffered a second brain injury in a traffic accident. She and her family did not want Peter to be confined to a nursing home for the rest of his life, but they discovered there was an overwhelming lack of specialised, community-based rehabilitation.
She set up the Peter Bradley Foundation in 2000, which provided him with Ireland’s first assisted-living residential service. Soon it was providing rehabilitation services for a growing number of young people who had brain injuries.
The name of the foundation was later changed to Acquired Brain Injury Ireland, or ABI Ireland, and it now delivers neuro-rehabilitation through residential, community and day services to 1,200 brain injury survivors, aged under 65, at any given time. It has a staff of 300 and its services are funded by the HSE.
She said that, too often, young people with brain injuries are left in inappropriate settings such as nursing homes, community hospitals or at home, where families are unable to cope.
Around 50 people suffer a brain injury every day in Ireland which can leave them with a chronic, ongoing condition that can affect their lives and those of their families for years or even decades.
In a pre-budget submission last year, ABI Ireland sought a €510,000 allocation for a nationwide Acquired Brain Injury Case Management Service to provide 7.5 case managers and a basic service across the country.
Among those to benefit from ABI Ireland’s services in the community was Pádraig Ferry (31), from Loughanure in The Rosses region of Co Donegal.
He suffered two brain aneurysms, the first when aged 10 and the second at the age of 25. After both incidents, he was treated in Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, and was admitted to the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire. When he returned to his local community after his first aneurysm, there were long delays and other shortcomings in local rehabilitation services and the care provided by his mother, Susie, his community and his school helped him to recover.
But after his second brain injury in 2015, he was able to access a number of rehabilitation services in the region provided by ABI Ireland, including participation in services in a Men’s Shed in Letterkenny, where he met others receiving help with neurological conditions.
“The support of ABI Ireland gave me hope and made a big difference to my recovery,” he said. He now works for a multinational company in Co Donegal and his inspirational recovery led to him being chosen as one of its mental health ambassadors in the company, where employees are encouraged to talk about mental health issues.
‘50 people a day suffer a brain injury’