Context
Around 50% of the homeless population have sustained a traumatic brain injury; many before becoming homeless. Homeless people are also more likely to sustain a serious head injury compared to the general population. When we add to this high prevalence rates of learning disability, alcohol-related brain damage, and developmental neurological impairments due to trauma and social exclusion, we see a picture of at least 70% of the homeless population experiencing unmet neuropsychological needs. Our range of services and support operates within this complex context and evolves along with the services we work alongside.
Services
Neuropsychological Assessment
We conduct holistic neuropsychological assessments, providing a picture of a person’s cognitive functioning in the context of their own life. We want to help ensure a person has a tailored support package that captures the extent of their strengths and weaknesses, in order to give best chance of a healthier, happier future.
Reflective Practice
Working in areas where people have ‘multiple complex needs’ is hard. The people we work with need a lot of support, and we need a lot of support too. Often people who work in these areas come from a background of having a lot of personal experience, which can lead to additional challenges at work. We all need supporting well, and the importance of having a safe and caring reflective space is vital to our wellbeing. We provide sessions which give protected time to reflect on the challenges and positives of working in this area and provide part of a structure of supportive supervision and pastoral care.
Consultation
Working with homelessness can be difficult, and the people who access homeless services can often have very complex, long-standing struggles. Consultation can help ‘share the load’ by working together to consider a person’s neuropsychological, emotional, spiritual, and social needs. This can be done as a group, or 1:1 with individual staff members, accommodation providers, and others who may benefit from a neuropsychological perspective on a person’s struggles, with the constant goal of helping move towards a more cohesive and compassionate approach to care.
Training
We provide bespoke training in collaboration with organisations. Our recent training has included…
- Trauma and the brain
- Anger and the brain
- Neuropsychology and homelessness
- Managing grief and loss
- Creating incident de-briefs
- Preventing eviction
If you want to discuss a specific training topic then please do get in touch.