Especially for Brain Injury Support Workers and More.

Who is it For
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Who is it for?

Whatever your interest in brain injury you are welcome.

My aim is to bring to you all sorts of ‘stuff’ that I hope will be useful for anyone with an interest in brain injury. Just so everyone is clear though, my primary focus for Changed Lives New Journeys is a bit more specific.

Changed Lives New Journeys is especially for “supporters” – a person who is paid, or who volunteers to work with a person who has a brain injury and their family.

So who exactly are “Supporters”?

Well supporters is the term I will use to include everybody – whatever your title. Some that I know of are ‘care worker’,’ ‘brain injury support workers’ ‘health care assistant’ ’ ‘allied health assistant’ ‘health aide’ ‘attendant care worker’ ‘volunteer’ ‘personal care worker’ ‘nurse’ etc etc etc. Bottom line, anyone supporting a person who has a brain injury.

What about me I am not a Supporter, but I live with brain injury?”?

If you are a person with brain injury, or a person significant to a person with brain injury, such as a partner, family member, or friend, please don’t feel left out, you are very welcome here. Please visit and contribute. I am NOT excluding people. It is more that I want to signal that the focus is on people outside of the person’s circle.

Why the separation, we all need to know about brain injury?

The approach of people outside of the family circle needs to be different, in a nutshell it is less familiar. The challenges are different, the roles, relationships, responsibilities and ways of behaving need to be different. Changed Lives New Journeys will focus on the working relationship with the hope it improves the lives of people living with brain injury.

What is different in the supporter relationship?
    • People outside of the family circle should not always respond in the same way as those who have a personal relationship, such as family members or friends.
      • A family member, partner, friend, responds out of love and a shared knowledge of the life journey of the family and family member with brain injury.
      • A supporter, who is not family, does not (and should not) have that intimacy, or the right to be as familiar.
    • The personal and professional boundaries for supporters are quite different to those of family members and friends. Supporters are not friends they have a clear and important role to play but it is not as a friend and it rarely lifelong.
    • The strategies supporters can implement might be different to strategies family members use; less familiar, more professional.
    • The kind of information a supporter needs, might sometimes be painful for people with brain injury and family to keep hearing, for example the losses that have occurred. Sometimes it may be a reminder of times and events you would rather leave behind but a supporter needs to understand.
    • In researching what was already available online it seemed that there were a number of sites with information focused on people living with brain injury, and family members, but less information just for supporters.

You are all welcome to share any information you find here. Please pass on information to colleagues and people you may be mentoring. It would also be wonderful if you could encourage others to visit and use the site themselves.

Let me know the kinds of topics you would like to hear more about. You can leave comments at the end of each blog post, or you can send me an email.

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. Deb

    Congratulations on the new blog Mel. What a stunning idea! I really look forward to following your updates and the contributions of others.
    Deb

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