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Substance Abuse and Brain Injuries
Community Teams
Community
Teams and Brain Injury
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Community Teams and
Brain Injury
It is not uncommon for a person who has experienced traumatic brain injury
to be referred to three, four, or even five programs after injury: mental
health, vocational rehabilitation, substance abuse, and others. Each has
its own operating system, jargon, philosophy, and treatment approach.
Just like a computer that needs consistent instructions for operation, clients and families need clear, consistent directions. "System incompatibilities" pose a special hardship for persons with TBI because their injuries may have interfered with the ability to process new, complex, or inconsistent information.
Teamwork is perhaps the most common-sense and most difficult of all the tools available to community professionals. Teams are widely used in business, manufacturing and the military to solve complex problems, to increase productivity, and to engineer creative solutions.
Teams are also widely used in inpatient medical and rehabilitation settings where many professionals must coordinate goals for recovery. But for persons who have experienced brain injury and have left the medical setting, there is usually no single person to take responsibility for coordination and planning.
Typically, collaboration among community professionals involves busy direct-service professionals who play phone tag in order to exchange information and formulate plans. Written referrals and recommendations often do not arrive until weeks after the community professional has begun work with a client. Seldom do all professionals sit down together with the client and family to plan a coordinated strategy. The team process is one of the most effective tools to make this happen.
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Substance Abuse Education Series
Substance Abuse and Brain Injury Toolbox
Utilities for Community Professionals"Lessons from Little Red Riding Hood"
"What Do We Do With A Drunken Sailor?"
Relationship Between Traumatic Brain Injury and Substance Abuse