Select Committee on Health Appendices to the Minutes of Evidence


APPENDIX 13

Memorandum by Headway Cambridgeshire (H28A)

  We have over 20 years experience of serving people with brain injuries across a wide geographic area covering all of Cambridgeshire, north west Essex, north Hertfordshire and parts of Suffolk and Norfolk—the population would be approaching the one million mark. With one in 800 people suffering a brain injury requiring medical treatment, this means there is substantial need in our area.

  There are two points we would like to make to the Select Committee on Health:

  1.  Recognising brain injury as a disability in its own right

  Currently, many of our members have to go round several loops and sources of funding and support simply because brain injury is not classified separately and has no dedicated resources. This means that they are often "lumped" with other disabilities, which at best, are inappropriate or, at worst, are detrimental to their rehabilitation.

  We understand that the European Parliament now recognises brain injury as a distinct disability and we urge our Members of Parliament to take this important step too.

  2.  Joined up funding

  A somewhat farcical situation has arisen locally. Our landlord—a NHS Trust—will be charging us a commercial rent of c. £40,000 from April 2002; previously, a peppercorn rent had been the agreement. Our day care provision is funded on a service contract basis by Social Services and so we have built this new rent charge in to new fee levels. To afford this increase, it now transpires that Social Services will be seeking to recharge some costs to the Health Authority in respect of Cognitive Therapy cases as distinct from welfare care which we provide.

  This financial merry go-round has absorbed considerable time in each of the three organisations and it is surely possible to approach it on a more sensible basis of joint funding that enables us to focus on delivering effective services to a very vulnerable group of people.

February 2001


 
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