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Placing trauma at the heart of neuro-rehab
From a realisation that case management needed more focus on emotional rehabilitation, particularly with regard to client trauma, Psychworks Associates was born. NR Times meets the founders of the fastgrowing venture and learns how their desire for change extends beyond neuro-rehab and into their passions of diversity and sustainability. Through recognising a lack of focus on emotional responses experienced by clients among case managers working with clients with life-changing injuries, Dr Shabnam BerryKhan established a business that continues to push for positive change within the neurorehab sector. Having moved into case management in 2010, clinical psychologist Shabnam quickly identified that the variety from her doctorate level clinical skills were being used even outside of the boundaries of treating therapy, and were hugely relevant to supporting clients in their everyday lives - but this was not a view shared by everyone. “My experience was - certainly back then,
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when case management was still finding its feet in terms of holistic support - that it was medically-driven in the main, with physical rehabilitation goals as the main focus. The concept of understanding trauma and how that actually gets in the way of rehab seemed to be missing to me,” she recalls. “For a long time, I thought ‘Am I missing a trick here? Have I missed out on where trauma has been talked about for clients, family and care/therapy teams, or where we address the concept of adjustment and think about the grief journey systemically?’ “I remember a senior case manager saying to me ‘What can a psychologist really do to help a two-year-old with brain injury?’ I was honestly speechless. “But while there were some people who just didn’t get it, others did, and I got a bit more confidence to talk more about what I knew.
It did seem to resonate with solicitors and case managers, and I started getting referrals.” And from there, PsychWorks Associates was born - a unique and brave medico-legal focused business which delivers treating psychology services and case management support to serious and catastrophically injured clients, as well as training to personal injury lawyers and those working within a InterDisciplinary Team (IDT). The fast-growing venture, run by Shabnam and husband Gabriel, has become an established presence in London and the South East since its foundation in 2014, and is seeing ongoing expansion across the country. But with its growth comes responsibility, and its values of sustainability and diversity are central to the PsychWorks Associates operation. And at the heart of its service delivery is the focus on trauma, to actively challenge the situation Shabnam faced and make positive difference to clients’ rehabilitation experience and the impact professionals and the IDT can make. “We are all about focusing on the trauma, for both the client and their family, and how that then looks to the professional network supporting them,” she says. “The family involvement is hugely important, and it doesn’t make sense to me when people don’t see that especially as there is so much literature supporting this idea. “How can you not see that having a system around the family to address their trauma, to deal with the sadness of what has happened to their family member, could be helpful to the client, who is trying to engage with rehab and relies heavily on the people around them? “It's about working within an IDT, and helping an understanding of the emotional response to the injury filter through these different layers, and then communicating that in such a way that not only makes sense to the clients and those that we're working with, but also to the solicitors who instruct us.” To deliver a multi-systemic service that serious personal injury work is effectively, Shabnam and her team of litigation-informed treating psychologists adopt a formulation approach, which they are committed to delivering differently to the vast majority of other nonspecialist psychology providers - in the client’s own environment. “I would say at least 95 per cent of independent psychologists are set up to be run from a clinic of some description, the idea being that a client would go to them,” says Shabnam.
