For over 10 years, reach has provided a unique home-based private-sector rehabilitation service for severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). Several thousand British adults/children suffer severe TBI each year affecting physical, cognitive, emotional, behavioural, functional and social abilities at home, at work and in educational settings.

Without rehabilitation the majority of claimants suffer long-term loss of independence, require many hours of daily care and have a total inability to return to work or education. Effective rehabilitation, such as provided by reach, changes all that for most severe TBI claimants, resulting in massive benefits to the claimant and family, as well as the insurers.

reach is unique: assessment and rehabilitation are carried out at home; programmes are delivered one-to-one by a Personal Programme Assistant (PPA); supervision is fulfilled by a Programme Manager (PM), with at least 10 years experience as a neuro-occupational therapist in the field of child, adult and/or employment rehabilitation, which ensures a high calibre of rehabilitation delivery. Comprehensive progress reports are provided regularly.

British and American research reports on severe TBI rehabilitation find a 50 per cent reduction in care need, with about one third returning to some form of work. reach findings concur that results for the home-based approach exceed those for the residential variety.

A review of our completed rehabilitation cases (mid 2003-mid 2004) indicated that before rehabilitation the average care need was 16 hours per day, with none returning to work. After rehabilitation, the average care need was 4.7 hours per day; 80 per cent had returned, or were able to return, to full or part-time work. All had a vastly improved quality of life. Our results represent the first quantitative evidence for the effectiveness of private-sector home-based rehabilitation for British adults with severe TBI. The benefits to all are clear; we envisage expanding this client survey focussing on standardised outcome measures.

What have we achieved? We have:

More recently, reach was recognised for its effective brain injury rehabilitation when we were named "Rehabilitation Provider of the Year 2005".

Throughout reach has remained totally independent. Finally, reach is a rehabilitation provider. We offer neither case management nor care. Our aim is to provide a high quality, cost-effective service, using the latest rehabilitation methods, to enable brain injured individuals to reach their full potential and achieve their goals, and for reach to be at the forefront of the British market for rehabilitation delivery. Heather Batey