Rehabilitation is an area of the legal sector that is synonymous with client care. How must rehab providers continually look to develop their offering so that their clients are receiving the most contemporary and up-to-date service?

Rehabilitation is a key process within the legal industry and a process I have worked with for the past 30 years. However, often the terminology adds to confusion and misinterpretation which leads to the disruption of a claimant’s journey of recovery.  It is important to be clear in the delivery of rehabilitation, to identify the best possible service to meet the ongoing symptomatology of a claimant. Often the services of Rehab, Support and Care become intertwined and so I’d like to take this opportunity, as the first of my editorial columns, to clarify this for you by way of a proverb:

“Give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime.”

I hear you say, “How could this possibly be relevant to the role of rehabilitation following brain injury? “. Let me explain. Offering Care & Support packages without Rehabilitation is like offering the person a fish.  It supports their daily needs but offers little hope of improvement for the future.  On the other hand, a properly designed rehab programme offers the opportunity for personal growth, improved independence and enhanced quality of life which will last for a lifetime. 

So for clarity, what is good rehabilitation?

Rehabilitation teaches strategies to improve physical, cognitive and psychological performance which have become more difficult following an injury or accident.  It should have SMART goals while recognising that not all problems can be fixed.  Rehabilitation may be provided by private or statutory services and ideally takes place within the client’s own home. Importantly, rehabilitation should be outcome-focused and regularly appraised to meet changing needs while ensuring up-to-date processes are instilled, including digital and remote opportunities, to optimise functional recovery.

Rehabilitation is not a permanent process, it is there to help the patient achieve their objectives not to provide an ongoing support structure.

So back to our “fish versus the fishing lessons”.

An injured person returning home may need to be provided with fish in the form of daily Care, however, it encourages them to take the risk of finding out what they are really capable of.  This means embarking on fishing lessons in the form of a rehabilitation programme to learn new techniques and skills. These enable the individual to optimise their potential and to enjoy a level of independence which they may never have imagined following their accident.

As rehabilitation providers, we need to ask ourselves:

Are we offering a fish or a fishing lesson?