Covid-19: Acquired Brain Injury

Debate between Chris Bryant and Liz Twist

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that our report, “Time for Change”, which was produced by the APPG with the help of the United Kingdom Acquired Brain Injury Forum, actually demonstrates the importance of neurorehabilitation, both in acute settings and in community-based cases?

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I pay tribute to her for the work that she has done on this issue in lots of different debates, particularly on the relationship between neurorehabilitation and education. It is about the individual in the acute setting, perhaps after a traumatic brain injury in a car crash or something like that, and then it is about that person being given enough neurorehabilitation so that they do not need an enormous care package when they go out into the community, but it is also making sure that there is enough ongoing neurorehabilitation in the community so that they do not fall back on requiring even more of a care package—not because I want to deny care packages, but because I want people to live independently and have the freedom that we would all want for every individual.

I will add two other things that I really want. I am sorry that I am sounding like a popular beat combo from a previous generation—my husband will be proud of me. Neurorehab should be one of the 12 specialities protected during covid. I have made a similar argument about cancer, and cancer has quite rightly had lots of coverage in the country. I hope that very soon we will see the cancer recovery plan, which we have been awaiting for some time, but we also need one for neurorehabilitation. I will come to some of the reasons for that.

The final thing that I really want is a coherent, consistent and tidy arrangement of community neurorehabilitation across the whole country, so that whether someone is in Wells, in Winchester or in the middle of Manchester, they and their family or loved ones have the same right to access ongoing community rehabilitation. Otherwise, it just seems terribly unfair. One of the things that so many families have said to me time and again is that they feel as if they are pushed from pillar to post. They hear a story of somebody getting rehabilitation sorted in one part of the country, and then they find that it is simply not available in their part.

I therefore reiterate that I really want a single coherent approach towards brain injury, and not just in neurorehabilitation—although, as I said earlier, we also need a national neurorehabilitation strategy. We also have to bring together all the different elements. I have spoken to the Minister for the Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), about the need to bring together all the different departmental Ministers into a single committee to look at the interaction between the work of the Department for Work and Pensions, the Ministry of Defence—it deals with many veterans who have had brain injuries during active service—the Departments for Education and for Health and Social Care, the Treasury, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, because it looks at the provision in local communities, and, for that matter, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. One of the most depressing and upsetting things this year has been hearing the family of Bobby Charlton say that they reckon that the dementia from which he suffers is a result of his experience playing football, and particularly heading the ball. I am not an England supporter, being a Welshman, but how depressing is it that so many of the players in the 1966 team have subsequently been found to have had dementia, depression and anxiety, which were almost certainly related to their playing of football? We put these people on a pedestal, but we are not prepared to protect them. I am still extremely critical of the way the Football Association has behaved around this.

The problem this year, in particular, is that during the first lockdown, a lot of people with brain injuries were discharged early. I understand why it happened, because hospitals had to make beds available for people with covid, but lots of units were closed in the east of England and in the midlands, which are the two areas that have done the most research into this. Between 50% and 100% of the beds that are normally allocated for neurorehabilitation were closed down and simply not available, and people were very swiftly discharged into their community.

The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy has found that 80% of NHS services in this field have not yet resumed—80%. The number of people acquiring brain injuries during this time, in all the different ways that I have mentioned, has not slowed down; if anything, it has sped up. We have always said in our all-party parliamentary group that brain injury is a hidden epidemic. The person standing in front of us in a queue may be slurring their words and we might think that they are doing so because they have been drinking, but it may be because they have a brain injury. Of course, it is not written on their forehead. Lots of the problems associated with brain injury are not visible, so it is all the more important that we dig down into these issues.

The waiting list for community neurorehabilitation is now four to six months. That is a phenomenal length of time for families to be providing care, particularly when covid means that they sometimes cannot even visit the person concerned. There are major comorbidity questions as well. Patients have been discharged into adult social care with no neurorehabilitation at all. We now know that covid itself is causing neurocognitive problems for many people—not just people with long covid, but those with other symptoms as well. I guess that as covid develops and we get more understanding of the disease—and, incidentally, as we are able to treat more people and keep them alive—it is likely that there will be more, not fewer, people who need neurorehabilitation.

[Liz Twist]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we now need to make sure that those rehabilitation services come to the top of the pile, because this is causing a real problem for too many people in their everyday lives?

[Chris Bryant]

Absolutely. This is one of the difficulties in this field. We have worked with the United Kingdom Acquired Brain Injury Forum, and Chloe Hayward is wonderful. Headway is also a wonderful organisation, although like many charities in this field, it is having a really difficult time this year. Despite that, the truth is that because there are many different routes to a brain injury, it does not always acquire the same currency as cancer or other medical conditions, and yet it affects at least 1.4 million people in the United Kingdom. That is one of the things we need to tackle.

Specialist early supported discharge and community neurorehabilitation teams were redeployed in large numbers during the first lockdown earlier this year, and many were furloughed. In some cases, they have still not been brought back, and in lots of parts of the country there simply are no services available in this situation. What happens is that the person with the acute condition—the acute set of problems—is not treated but sent out of hospital, because the bed is needed in this second lockdown. That person is sent directly into adult social care, with a phenomenally expensive care package. I am not against the expensive care package—that is what we have to provide—but the point is that neurorehabilitation would be far more cost-effective; there would be far better outcomes for the individual patient; and it would be far more sensible for Government if we could get the system sorted out. In the second lockdown—who knows whether we are having a third lockdown, or a tier situation, or whatever it is?—the truth is that lots of neuro patients are being discharged early. That is just a fact, and I think that it will give us a long problem, not only for the individuals and their families but in lots of local authorities and community services.

What am I talking about here? What is the real issue? I will end in a moment, Ms Eagle. As I have said, brain injury comes in many forms. Young brains are often particularly affected. Kids under the age of five from poorer families are four times more likely to have a significant brain injury—as are teenage kids from poorer backgrounds—than those from wealthier backgrounds. There is a knock-on implication for the Ministry of Justice, and so on. Sometimes it is the executive function that is affected, so people may find it difficult to inhibit some of their immediate instincts. Sometimes it is memory that does not work, or it may be language or elements of personality. For some people, the issue is phenomenal fatigue—not just the kind of thing where someone had a big night out the night before and cannot really be bothered to come into a Westminster Hall debate, but a real fatigue that brings people to the point of absolute despair and an inability to feel like living. For many children in particular, sometimes nine or 12 months after the event, there is neurocognitive stall—basically, the brain seems to go on strike and refuse to work as anybody would want it to.

The thing is that neurorehabilitation works. I do not mean just any old rehabilitation; I mean neurorehabilitation, which uses specialist staff who deal with these issues all the time and know about how the brain and the mind work together and how people can be rehabilitated. That works when it is there from the beginning, when it is available consistently for a sustained period and when the connections between acute and community services are absolutely clear. When it works at its best, it is such a joy, because we see kids who were completely dependent on their parents, and on a whole team of people from social services, suddenly able to smile again and able to discover their own freedom and ability to get on with their lives independently of others. We see older people who are able to regain many of the physical and mental skills that they had before, and to regain some of their personality. That is such a beautiful and rewarding thing to behold, and it is why I hope that the Minister will be able to give me everything that I want.