The Vocational Rehabilitation Service works with people who’ve had a significant brain injury, supporting them back to employment and independent living. They noticed that many of their service users were experiencing neurological fatigue, low self-esteem, anxiety, and cognitive challenges. There was a growing demand to offer interventions for these issues also to use peer support workers within the service. Their improvement project aimed to design a programme of interventions with peer support being a key component.
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This improvement work was co-designed with service users within the service through patient led forums and structured feedback. They developed a 3-stream intervention offer of a:
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Interactive 6-week therapy led the ’Building Skills for Work’ group programme which includes self-management strategies for fatigue, anxiety and cognitive challenges.
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Workshops designed to build endurance, attention and stamina tools for returning to work.
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Tailored 1-to-1 interventions on specific neurological deficits and needs to return to work.
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They measured the impact via patient reported outcome measures. These consistently demonstrated the positive benefits of the Building Skills for Work groups, workshop programmes and tailored 1-to-1 interventions through a balanced delivery of clinician facilitation and peer support. This model of co-designed and co-delivered programmes is now the standard method of delivering the service.
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"A really helpful group, helped me understand what’s going on with my brain and how to deal with it."
