1) The program must have any useful support program paperwork available onsite. A staff person must help or, if necessary, completely fill out the forms with the survivor. The program should turn in the paperwork to the appropriate agency for the survivor. The program staff must follow through after this step. The staffer must be willing to go to a meeting with the survivor at another agency if a face-to-face meeting at the other agency with the individual applying for services is required.
2) If the individual with cognitive challenges has low income or will soon enough because he cannot work, the staff person should be willing to help that person fill out paperwork for the following programs: Social Security Disability Insurance benefits (SSDI), Supplemental Security Income benefits (SSI), county in-home care services, discounted home and cell phone services (California LifeLine), the discounted utilities program (CARE), the supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP), and the housing choice voucher program. There may be other aid programs available. This list is by no means exhaustive.
3) If someone calls in and has no means to get to the community program because he or she has no transport, the staffer should attempt to help that person get onto the paratransit system in order that that person can go out into the community, including going to the program’s day classes or support meetings.
4) If the person is calling from a payphone and is living in his car, or if the individual calls to say he is being evicted from his or her home, it is the duty of the staffer to see to it that the individual gets to a local homeless shelter. Therefore, the staffer must have information regarding all local shelter locations. And the staffer should convey this information to the individual in need.
5) If the person doesn’t have enough to eat the staffer should provide a list of all of the food banks and other sources of food for the needy that are in the area.
6) If the individual is unable to handle money, the brain injury service provider agency should arrange for representative payee services for the client. If there aren’t any low-cost representative payee services available in the area, the brain injury agency should take on that duty.
7) The staffer should ascertain the medical supports the individual has, encourage the individual to seek basic medical interventions (such as connecting with a physician or taking a physical), and provide information about free and low income medical clinics that are available in the area. The staff should also have on hand a list of any doctors, neuropsychologists, medical therapists, and hospitals in the area that accept Medi-Cal (California’s Medicaid program) patients.
Offering much more extensive services and supports as indicated above is the only way that certain people, who are basically completely alone and cognitively incapacitated, are going to get to the stability necessary for them to subsequently attend cognitive or vocational retraining classes, support meetings, and the like.
These types of services and supports are desperately needed by many individuals in the brain injury community. Any agency that has government brain-injury-specific funding that merely offers conferences, seminars, and training sessions for providers; rudimentary counseling, classes and support meetings for survivors; or brain injury awareness campaigns is not doing sufficient work on behalf of the brain injury survivor community.
The community programs should not just be there for the survivors who can get to meetings or classes on their own or with the help of family. The programs need to be there for every individual with an acquired brain injury who requests or requires basic human safety net interventions in addition to brain injury community reintegrative programming.
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