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.
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.
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.
"A really helpful group, helped me understand what’s going on with my brain and how to deal with it."
