Acquired Brain Injury

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Liz Twist]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for those comments. I most certainly agree that we need to have very specific proposals on how we can support people and to make sure that the support is actually put into place as well. As we know, there can sometimes be delays in achieving the ECHP, so I hope that more work can be put into that as well.

The Child Brain Injury Trust, which does excellent work in this area, has issued a call for action that includes some quite practical steps. It tells me that professionals across the field of acquired brain injury educational psychology are working hard to achieve the changes needed to support children in education following an acquired brain injury, but this requires all parties to listen and to implement the recommendations of the “Time for Change” report.

An acknowledgement of the support and interventions needed for paediatric acquired brain injury is required to limit the long-term societal costs and impact that this disability can have. Of course, it affects society as a whole, not just the individual. We want to give people the best chance in life, and that is why it is particularly appropriate to look at how we can support children who have an acquired brain injury. There needs to be improved training for newly qualified teachers—currently, acquired brain injury is not covered in that training—and a national campaign of recognition that acquired brain injury affects an additional 40,000 children and young people every year and has a significant impact on society.

The Child Brain Injury Trust says that acquired brain injury continues to be misdiagnosed and misunderstood, and our current system, and lack of knowledge and support, is letting down thousands of families. Funding is required for whole-family support. We need improved training for educators and youth justice teams, because over 60% of young people in custody report prior head injury. As other Members have mentioned, many young people affected by acquired brain injury are excluded from school due to their “inappropriate behaviour” and then go on to commit crime. Therefore, better knowledge of the condition and improved support has the potential to save society huge sums of money otherwise needed for youth justice.

The Child Brain Injury Trust calls for involvement and commitment from the Department for Education to support and fund some of these recommended initiatives. As I said, I hope that the Department for Education will take a more active part in looking after these young people and look again at its response to see how it can be improved.

The other area I want to touch on, which has already been mentioned by a number of Members, is acquired brain injury and carbon monoxide poisoning. This is not something that I had thought of myself. It shows, again, how many areas of our lives and our environment affect people and can cause acquired brain injury. I am a member not only of the APPG on acquired brain injury but the APPG on carbon monoxide, and earlier this year we had a special roundtable meeting chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda. One of the difficulties is recognising when people are suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, especially the impact that that can have on the brain. The shortage of support is particularly difficult for people with an acquired brain injury caused by carbon monoxide poisoning, as they are less likely to receive specialist treatment if they experience low-level carbon monoxide exposure that results in more subtle neurological effects. To address this, the APPG on carbon monoxide recommends that NHS England develop a specialist clinic for people with long-term neurological effects caused by carbon monoxide exposure. This will help to plug the gap in care provision and enable future studies that will innovate treatment methods.

We must also remember that, as the Government said in their November 2018 health and social care policy paper, prevention is better than cure, and preventing carbon monoxide poisoning will also prevent some of these acquired brain injuries. The APPG recommends that the Government introduce preventive measures, including mandating carbon monoxide alarms in all tenures. I know that the Government are already looking at this in certain tenures, but it should be across all tenures. Carbon monoxide monitors should be provided for those in first-time pregnancy. We must tackle substandard housing that increases the risk of carbon monoxide exposure. We also recommend that Public Health England and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office do more to raise public awareness of carbon monoxide, to encourage risk-lowering behaviours at home and abroad. The special roundtable meeting that we had was very productive. We had a high number of medical people there who were recognising this problem that perhaps the rest of us had not recognised until now. We need some practical steps to improve that.

I have mentioned the Child Brain Injury Trust’s recommended actions, particularly on education. There is so much more that I could say, but much of it has already been said, so I will only mention a few things. We are seeing more people survive severe trauma, and we must give more effective support after they recover from their immediate injury, to help them develop their life.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. I have personal experience of this through my brother, who unfortunately had a very severe accident, which left him brain-damaged. Owing to the determination of my parents and family, who took the time to care for and look after him, we were able to give him some sort of an independent life, which is very important. He is happy and safe with his carers, friends and family. Does the hon. Lady agree that more needs to be done to support the families of those with ABI, to give them hope that there can be more than Sunday visits to a designated place—there can be a home life as well—and there is a chance of a semblance of normal life for people with ABI? Intensive care packages are essential to rehabilitation, and funding must be available for them. It is so important to give people who have acquired brain injury a normal life, if at all possible.

[Liz Twist]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I certainly agree that we must give more support to the carers and families of young people or adults with acquired brain injury, while allowing the person who is directly affected to have as full and good a life as they can.

I want to mention the “One Punch” campaign. We are becoming increasingly aware of the impact that one punch on a night out, perhaps after a lively evening, can have. It can be devastating, and I am glad to see campaigns around the country aiming to ensure people are aware of that. We have talked about how sports must keep up the level of support and awareness and, if in doubt, sit people out. That is really important. We have also heard about the huge impact on our prison community. We must develop a response to that, so that we can take account of acquired brain injury and how it affects people’s behaviour and development.

Headway has made some recommendations. It says:

“Brain injury can happen to anyone, at any time. Living with the effects of a brain injury creates challenges in almost every area of life.”

That is so true. Headway is calling on Members of Parliament to recognise and support the needs of service users, families and carers, including greater understanding of the complexity and hidden effects of brain injury; wider recognition of the symptoms of brain injury, to ensure rapid and accurate diagnosis; access to timely, specialist rehabilitation and support services; an end to lengthy waits for social service assessments for support funding; changes to disability benefit assessments, which currently fail a large number of brain injury survivors and their families—Headway has a campaign called “Right First Time”—and more effective data gathering across the NHS, to provide clearer evidence of the needs of survivors, around diagnosis, acute care, longer-term rehabilitation and support to regain independence. Acquired brain injury is life changing, and we must do everything we can to support people across all spheres of life.