The strategic vision for Anchor Point

By Alyson Norman

Our second Annual general meeting took place on Thursday 12th October. There was a short report on the progress made over the last year by each of the seven individual working groups (Research, Information, Practice, Policy, Lives, Education & Strategy). The People group has now been chnaged to the Practice group to better reflect the group’s aims of understanding and promoting the best practice guidelines for the various health professionals who work with families after ABI.

It was clear that a lot has been achieved in terms of raising awareness, engaging in a wide range of research studies, feeding into policies such as the ABI strategy and trying to provide practice and educational information to professionals.

The Chair of Anchor Point, Dr Charlie Whiffin, announced a change in the focus of the steering committee to a wider reporting committee, with the strategy working group taking on role of steering Anchor Point moving forward. The team in the Strategy group are working on a document to guide the work of Anchor Point in the short, medium, and longer terms. As part of the work on this, it has been decided that from now on, there will be an annual theme on which each of the working groups will base their yearly goals.

This will not detract from the central aims of each working group, but each year all the groups will be expected to feed into one major theme. This coming year the theme will be secondary impact with the focus on highlighting the secondary impact of brain injury on family members and how these can be reduced.

This is an important topic. We cannot prevent everyone from having a brain injury. Therefore, the primary impact of experiencing a loved one going through such an event cannot be completely avoided. What can be addressed is minimsing the secondary impact that occurs due to being unsupported, invisible and ignored by health and social care professionals.