Good Rehabilitation (recovery and RTW)  is about knowing the right thing to do at the right time. Good rehabilitation professionals will step outside of the “process” and help the key influencers understand what the right step is, at the right time. When coupled with collaboration and accountability, this is when Good Rehabilitation becomes powerful and transformative.

This week is Brain Injury Awareness week #BIA2017. We at Purple Co have been providing services to people who live with injuries to their brains, and the functional consequences of these injuries, since the company started in 2008. What has been interesting for me, and for other Rehabilitation Professionals to acknowledge, is how vastly different each experience of brain injury is. This is so much more than a severity rating. It’s the personal and psycho-social implications of the types of behaviours that result following a brain injury.

I, like so many Rehabilitation Professionals, was operating under a very wrong assumption. You see, I thought that the more senior a person was in the world of work, the higher they had climbed the corporate ladder, the more capable and knowledgeable they would be able to know how to apply for a new role.

For any client, there are countless reasons why work is “not a good idea”. Every client has their own objections about getting back into work, but the thing is, these barriers might not be the same as the barriers that they readily talk to us about.

You may have read my last post where I discussed my lemon tree at length. I know how weird that sounds but I drew some pretty interesting parallels between how I treated a stinkbug infestation and how we currently manage rehab and claims.

I had a conversation with a client recently that made me pause and reflect on why we actually encourage small steps in rehabilitation.

I hope you don’t mind if I talk about my lemon tree. It’s only because it’s the BEST example I’ve come across of what happens in holistic rehabilitation (and what happens if we don’t do it properly).

Let me start by asking you two questions:

1. How much stress have you experienced in the last year?
2. Do you believe that stress is harmful to your health?

I wanted to share with you all about where I am from my personal cancer journey – I’ve felt it important that I share my experiences in order to help others with theirs.

In our last blog post I wrote about 5 things we can be doing as Rehabilitation Professionals right now to help our clients be ready for work when the job market opens up again.

I am hearing many instances of late, where insurers and third-party sponsors are reluctant to refer clients who need services for assistance because “there are no jobs”.

If you spend any time scrolling social media newsfeeds, you will invariably come across someone writing about resilience. To be quite honest, I saw the word come up so much it lost all meaning for me, as I wasn’t seeing the fruit of this concept. It felt like it was another word we threw around that didn’t hold much substance for people.

Many thanks to iCare, GIO and EML for embracing the Purpose for People program.  A comprehensive whole-person program designed to prepare people experiencing injury and disability take back control of their life.

Work does not replace other therapies such as psychological or psychiatric treatment. However, it can be a positive way of being able to practice new skills that are being taught or explored in treatment.

For the last 2 years I’ve been analysing how we continue to help people make work, work well.  One of our core values here at Purple Co is to provide a Return On Investment (ROI) for our clients and their funding bodies.

We’ve heard stories before. One day a friend or family member walks into their workplace, the next, they are out of work. Sometimes this is expected, sometimes it’s a complete shock.

Sorry if this sounds facetious, but I find it more than a touch frustrating when I hear this question being repeatedly asked as if this is something new, or perhaps a little weird, along with a hint of underlying skepticism that this is just the latest fad doing the rounds. Though perhaps I should be grateful that the question is being raised more often in the public forum.