Head injuries can be classified into Traumatic and Non-Traumatic. All these individuals are seen by the physiotherapists within the NRT. For Occupational Therapy, the traumatic head injuries are seen by the Bradford Community Head Injury Rehabilitation Team (CHIRT).
Head Injury
Bradford Community Head Injury Rehabilitation Team (CHIRT)
The head injury team is based at St Luke’s Hospital and works with adults who have had a traumatic head injury (TBI). This means an injury caused by an external physical force, such as a blow to the head. Common causes include falls, road traffic accidents and assaults. To be eligible for support clients need to live in the Bradford area and be registered with a Bradford GP.
We are not a medical team there are no Doctors or Nurses in the team, we are entirely a therapy based team.
Within the team we have:
- Psychologists who support people in managing thoughts, feelings, and behaviour.
- Occupational Therapists who support people in managing difficulties with everyday tasks; and enabling their ability to return to old tasks or identify new ones.
The role of the team is to support people in their recovery to achieve things that are important to them after a TBI. We focus our work around the goals identified by the client, which could be returning to something they did before the TBI or doing something new. Brain Injury does not just affect the person who sustains the injury; therefore, the team also works with families and carers of the client.
Referrals to the team need to be made by a Health or Social care professional. Further information can be obtained by contacting the Team on 01274 365264 Mon – Fri, 8am – 5pm.