Letter to Members of the Scottish Parliament

Dear MSP,

I am writing to you as part of the Service User Forum for Brain Injury. This is a group of service users in Glasgow who wish to work together to improve services for people with acquired brain injury.

Brain Injury is a substantial problem in Scotland. The most up to date figures were produced in the year 2000 when it was found around 3500 people each year attend hospital in Glasgow after having suffered a brain injury. If this is extrapolated for the Scottish population over 12000 people each year are affected. After 5 years at least half of these are left with cognitive and emotional disabilities. It is a hidden disability because people look the same as anyone else.

In our initial meetings we have found that there was no standard information given out with regard to other services which we could benefit from (for example Momentum, Headway, Epilepsy Scotland or the Community Treatment Centre for Brain Injury). We feel that this is a big oversight which led to many people not getting the service they deserved or not knowing what services to look for. We believe that the reason for this is that Brain Injury has not been deemed “politically important”.

We want a pack of information available to all people with acquired brain injury on discharge from hospital. This pack would provide details of contacts and support networks available for people with ABI, their family and their carers. We would want to see this as a national rather than a local initiative- as the problems are similar across Scotland.

I would want you to consider what you could do to support this idea within Scotland, and how this could be implemented.

If you wish you could arrange to come to one of our meetings to discuss this and other of our issues of concern.

We look forward to reading your response,

Yours Sincerely,