Expansion of Acquired Brain Injury Services in Scarborough
In the fall of 2019, the Scarborough Centre for Healthy Communities (SCHC) and Cota collaborated to develop a proposal for the introduction of a new Scarborough Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) Outreach Team and an expansion to Cota’s ABI Adult Day Service (ADS) capacity for Scarborough residents. This partnership formed in response to a request for proposals issued by Central East LHIN and reported service gaps for people living with acquired brain injuries that had been previously identified by health system planning tables in Scarborough.
In addition, the Scarborough Health Network had reported that they were experiencing challenges in relation to their Alternative Level of Care (ALC) rates, in part, due to the number of people with acquired brain injuries who were awaiting community-based rehabilitation services and discharge.
From 2017-18:
(data collected by the CE LHIN)
The ABI Outreach Team
The ABI Outreach Team is an interdisciplinary team comprised of employees from both SCHC and Cota who work cohesively as one team to support the complex needs of this patient population and their families and caregivers. This includes":
1 FTE Behaviour Therapist (BT)
1 FTE Nurse Navigator (RN)
1 FTE Occupational Therapist (OT)
1 FTE ABI Case Manager
0.2 FTE Psychologist
3.5 FTE Individual Support Workers (ISWs)
This integrated, interdisciplinary-service model is the first of its kind for individuals living with an ABI diagnosis in Scarborough and is similar in some respects to Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams that support individuals with severe mental health challenges.
“As with all new teams, spreading the word of our services was the number one challenge facing the team, until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Despite having to reduce in person service delivery, the team was able to pivot quickly and provide virtual support to clients so that services were minimally impacted. It is exciting to see how the team has come together to support some extremely complex clients, utilizing their combined skills and expertise to ensure the clients’ goals are met.”
“The success of this partnership relies upon the strengths that each organization brings to it. We recognize that both SCHC and Cota have their own areas of expertise and experience as well services to offer. It is because of our mutual respect for one another that we are able to provide a better, more holistic service for our clients together than we could on our own.”
“What is particularly unique about this program is how clients are able to seamlessly access an array of community health and support services to address their holistic health needs. As we watch this team continue to develop over the coming years, we at SCHC look forward to strengthening our partnership with Cota and further demonstrating the benefits of collaboration and coordination on client experience as well as the provision of health services in the community”
Abi adult day service
Through the same funding initiative, Cota also enhanced its ABI Adult Day Service capacity for Scarborough residents in order to:
Support 22 additional participants
Accommodate at least 10 individuals that have more complex care needs, including those who require occasional one-to-one support for their personal care