Neil Brooks and Cathy Johnson, Directors of Rehab Without Walls, are case management pioneers. For over 20 years they have actively promoted case management as the best way to provide rehabilitation and manage disability following brain injury, initially in the NHS and more recently in the independent sector. Their experience of residential rehabilitation led Neil and Cathy to found Rehab Without Walls in 1995.
As Neil and Cathy saw it, people with brain injury would prefer to be treated in their own homes and usually they find it easier to cope by learning to do things at home, rather than in a residential unit many miles away.
Rehab Without Walls therefore began to coordinate rehabilitation for individuals in their own homes, using local services and local therapists, providing a bespoke service for each client.
Neil and Cathy adopted a "whatever it takes" model which has been carried on by the case management team, trying to find solutions to what had been seen as intractable problems by other professionals.This is truly a client centred approach, building the service around the individual and being able to do "what's right" for the people concerned. We now take responsibility for over 220 clients across the UK with case managers as far apart as Northumberland and Kent, Bristol and Colchester.
Each of the case managers brings their unique professional experiences to our service, whether it be a former health visitor who ran a local Headway service, a former headmaster for educationally behaviourally disturbed children, or a former social worker with years of brain injury rehabilitation. Our team of case managers have a wealth of experience and can call upon each other for information, help and support. However, we also know that we do not know everything. Over the years Rehab Without Walls has built up an extensive network of contacts and advisers; like any good case manager, if we don't know ourselves we can always find someone who does!
