Headway Glasgow

General information

Headway Glasgow is a “user led” and involved service. This means that we are not just doing things to help people with brain injury, but that people are coming together to help each other. It is the people with brain injury and carers who best understand the effects, and so they can be best placed to help provide support to each other.

Headway Glasgow works with people with acquired brain injury, their families and carers in the Glasgow area. Headway Glasgow is an independent Scottish – charity (SC030113) which is also affiliated to the wider Headway movement. We are a small charity covering the whole area of Glasgow, we have achieved a lot over the last few years and we wish to keep on developing.

Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) can happen to anyone in an instant and change their life forever. It can happen as a result of a road traffic accident, an assault, a fall, an infection or a spontaneous bleed in the brain. The effects can be devastating. ABI can affect people’s physical abilities like their walking and their vision; their cognitive abilities like their memory and thinking; and their emotions leading to depression and anger. The outcome of this can affect every aspect of the person’s life from their relationships to their work.

Glasgow has a significant problem with acquired brain injury. Over 3000 people per year go to hospital in Glasgow having had a brain injury. Studies show half of these people may still be experiencing problems after a year. Headway Glasgow has contact with between 80 and 90 people each month including about 10 new enquiries each month. Headway Glasgow is unique in brain injury services in Glasgow in offering long term peer support and in being a user led service.

Headway Glasgow provides:

Information- for example we produced a Directory of Services which brings together the details and contacts for 50 different organisations across the city which can potentially help people with brain injury. The online version is here:
https://headwayglasgow.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/headway-directory-2014.pdf
We also distribute information on all aspects of brain injury.

Support- for example through our Brain Injury Discussion Group which gathers together carers and people with brain injury to share common experiences and provide support to one another. This support is key to Headway Glasgow’s activities as pointed out in this quote from our evaluation “They really helped me with the isolation. I felt I wasn’t alone and that people knew and understood what I was going through“.

Services- for example the Cookery Group helped people to develop their cooking skills and increase their healthy eating. Or the Social activities which encourage people to take part again in society. Each month Headway runs around 20 groups which promote people’s involvement in society and reduce their social isolation.

We have good evidence that says the outcome of our work is that people are better informed about brain injury. Our members report that they feel less socially isolated and have become more involved in their communities. We would hope to increase the number of people accessing our services, as outlined above we are currently only seeing a small proportion of the expected numbers of people.
We wish to continue to provide and develop these essential activities.