The Brain Injury forum has a small working committee of 8 people representing the following specialist areas: acute, rehab, vocational rehab, community, NHS and independent sector. There is also a wider group of OTs on the database who are available for advice, comment and input to requests for information on a range of topics, as well as contacts for research information and input to national projects run by a variety of different organizations, we are representing COT on a number of projects including the Dept of Health advisory group for the NSF.
Hello from the BI Forum committee!
The BI Forum committee are producing guidelines for OT's working with clients with ABI. We have mapped the BSRM National Clinical Guidelines: Rehabilitation following ABI onto the NSF for Long Term Conditions. Currently we are carefully reviewing the quality requirements as they apply to OT practice and using the WHO ICF and opinion of specialists in the field to identify any gaps in the evidence base. We aim to gather additional evidence via the literature and then seek consultation with members and other interested parties, such as Headway. We hope to invite selected specialists to a meeting early in 2009 to review an early draft and then seek wider consultation from members for comments hopefully by the middle of 2009. It's taking longer than we initially thought, but if a job is worth doing...!
Alongside this we are holding our conference on 27th November 2008 on the topic of Motivational Interviewing led by David Manchester. Please check the COT website for further details of this exciting opportunity as he is an excellent speaker and the topic is of potential relevance to any therapists working with people to promote behaviour change. We are also having preliminary thoughts about the National Conference in 2009 to be held in either Bristol or Bath! We welcome any suggestions for potential topics and speaker so do let us know. In addition, our intention is to enable members to keep abreast of new developments in research and clinical practice in ABI. Our quarterly updates regarding progress towards the guidelines, recent developments and courses/conferences of interest will be available via this website.
Donna Malley (on behalf of the BI Forum Committee)