Community is Key for TBI Rehabilitation

“The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.” – Coretta Scott King

Survivors of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the Rutland area are well served in their rehabilitation and recovery by the compassion they are shown by their community.

The experience of surviving and enduring a traumatic brain injury is catastrophic. The cause is often a motor vehicle accident or fall, but it can also occur due to surgery, stroke or from a brain bleed. The deficits experienced vary and are often long-lasting and require a wholistic approach to recovery. These deficits can be both cognitive and physical, but are also social, emotional, vocational, and relational in nature. Unfortunately, a brain injury survivor can lose their partner, friends, sometimes even family, and frequently lose their job, vehicle, and general support system.

In the past, the only alternative to receiving acute medical and rehabilitation care usually involved the patient traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles to an institutional setting for an extended stay, which added further to feelings of isolation and estrangement from support systems. However, thanks to the compassionate actions of community members, Rutland now has created a benevolent and user-friendly system so that brain injury survivors can stay in the embrace of their home community. Our local hospital, Rutland Regional Medical Center, has gone to great lengths to stay on the cutting edge of brain injury rehabilitation for inpatients and outpatients alike, with superb physiatry and rehabilitation teams which includes professional speech/cognitive, occupational, and physical therapists.

Many local professionals in the counseling, vocational rehabilitation and driver’s education fields have pursued specific brain injury accreditation and gained experience, thereby broadening their scope of practice to encompass brain injury specific needs. The result is that the individual feels fully accepted and part of the community while they are actively rehabilitating from their injury.

Vermont, and Rutland in particular, has been the leader of what is now a national movement to care for brain injury survivors in their community rather than in an institutional setting. For too long, survivors remained in hospitals, nursing homes, or even jails, rather than in their home communities where their ongoing rehabilitation needs could be better met. In 1984, Vermont was the 17^th State in the Nation to become part of the National Brain Injury Association. Following this, Lenny Burke’s Farm in Wallingford began serving residents with full-time community-based care in 1987. Since its inception, Lenny Burke’s Farm has committed to supporting its residents with an open door, a green light, and the embrace of the greater community.

In addition to all the medical and rehabilitation services available in Rutland County, it is perhaps the “compassionate actions of its members” that are what truly make the difference in the ongoing journey of recovering from brain injury. There is a myriad of examples of this that take place daily throughout the community, including a particularly poignant one from Valentine’s Day earlier this year. The astonishingly talented Mill River Chamber Singers presented Singing Valentines at Lenny Burke’s Farm, as well as at local nursing homes and supervised apartment settings. On a day that an individual with a brain injury might feel a bit forgotten they were instead enfolded in the warm embrace of their community. The easy banter between the young student singers and the residents, with the resonant words from the song “So Happy Together….” echoing through the air, spoke volumes about the Rutland community that cares.

Written by Kevin Burke, the long-time program director of Lenny Burke’s Farm, and affiliated Burke Family Programs started for his brother Lenny (1961-2018), who was traumatically brain injured in 1979.