What is rehabilitation?
Rehabilitation is the process of restoring lost skills or helping children to learn new ways of doing things.
Most of the children with brain injuries arrive at The Children's Trust unable to walk or talk, many cannot swallow or feed themselves; some cannot breathe independently and depend on artificial ventilation. The majority have severe or profound learning difficulties because of their brain injury and other significant health needs. The children at the Trust have the severest of brain injuries.
Brain injury can happen to anyone and every brain injury is different. At the Trust the children follow an intense programme of therapies tailored to their particular needs. For James, rehabilitation at the Trust was all about picking up the pieces and rearranging them so they would make sense and work for him again…
“It is was as though your whole life and everything you can do or know or think or feel are sheets of paper, and they are all stored in this special filing cabinet which is your head. When you have a head injury, it is as if someone had taken that filing cabinet, emptied it and all the papers are scattered and muddled up. Some are even missing.
What the Trust did for me was to pick up all the papers and give them back to me, sorted out and organised. When a paper was missing, I learnt new ways to do things and I learnt how to sort out my own papers for myself. Without the Trust, I’d never have been able to achieve this much. Not only did they rebuild my skills, they also rebuilt my confidence. I think I’ve been given a second chance.”