Enhancing staff awareness of the experiences of people with acquired brain injury and their families through co-produced training

Project Background

Our Facilitator project with Brain Injury Matters NI (BIM) will enhance the understanding and awareness of the importance of hope and how recovery is a long-term journey that continues well beyond the initial rehabilitation people with acquired brain injury receive.

The project will work with people who use BIM services and their family members to identify the key messages of what helps in their recovery and everyday lives; and coproduce training material to convey these messages for health and social care staff who may work with them. By fostering co-production and collaboration, the project aims to create a cultural shift, ensuring services are more inclusive, respectful, and responsive. BIM seeks to build long-term partnerships with health and social care trusts, embedding continuous improvement and real-world insights into training. This project is based in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

IMPACT Factfile

Project Updates

The Wishing Tree at Brain Injury Matters

The Wishing Tree is a tradition used across cultures where people write their wishes on pieces of paper, ribbon or cloth and hang them on tree branches with the hopes that they will come true. The practice has since been adapted and is used as a participatory tool with groups to share their ideas and experiences. The activity benefits from inviting people to write their views, thus capturing quieter voices.  

In December 2025, as part of the IMPACT Facilitator’s project hosted by Brain Injury Matters, 13 people with acquired brain injuries and two carers took part in Wishing Tree workshops where they responded to the prompt, ‘what do you want people to understand about living with a brain injury?’. Participants wrote their ideas on paper luggage tags and hung them on a model tree. Responses centred around several key themes. For example, the importance of treating people who have an acquired brain injury with dignity, care and respect. One tag that exemplifies this theme read: ‘Life is hard. I’m still a human being. Don’t push me out. Include me’. The tags offer a poignant distillation of lived experiences.  

The Wishing Tree workshops informed the next phase of co-production at Brain Injury Matters: a six-week series of discussions where participants will reflect on their experiences of hospital discharge and life at home following their brain injury. Themes from these sessions fed into the development of training for health and social care staff in Northern Ireland.  

Co-prooduction workshops

From January to March 2026, we held six co-production workshops with 10 individuals with acquired brain injuries and their family members at Brain Injury Matters (hereafter referred to as participants). The aim of the workshop series was to identify and understand the issues they want included in training for health and social care staff related to their experiences of leaving hospital and transitioning home after their injury.

Personal experiences

Over the six sessions, participants spoke in-depth about their experiences. While their experiences were unique, several crosscutting themes emerged. Participants often felt they lacked chances to talk about prognosis and recovery. When these opportunities did arise, individuals with acquired brain injuries said they like to be spoken to directly and treated as people first, not just talked about as patients. They also recognized the benefits of including family members in important conversations around recovery. In addition, participants wanted honest but hopeful communication about recovery. Absolute statements or overly negative predictions by health and social care staff about recovery were seen as harmful. Compassionate, jargon-free communication and strong listening skills from health and social care staff helped participants feel respected and supported.

Participants also described the long-term impact of acquired brain injury as affecting identity, emotional wellbeing, family roles and daily life. Family members often experienced exhaustion, financial strain and a lack of recognition for their contributions. Over the longer-term, participants shared stories highlighting the important but hard work of adapting to a new identity and rebuilding meaningful lives post-injury.

Participant themes

The themes and experiences shared during the workshops will form the basis for training for health and social care staff in Northern Ireland. The planned training is not about what acquired brain injury is or its medical effects. Instead, it will shine a light on the messy and complex emotional journeys that people with acquired brain injuries and their family members experience when they transition from hospital to home post-injury.

The training will take the form of three filmed skits with an accompanying training guide. The skits will be directed by Rogue Encounters, a professional theatre company, and acted by individuals with lived experience of acquired brain injuries and their family members.

Meet Our Facilitator: Bekkah Bernheim

Bekkah Bernheim

I am an IMPACT Facilitator working with the charity Brain Injury Matters in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The project aims to co-produce a training for health and social care staff to increase awareness and understanding of the importance of hope in recovery for adults with acquired brain injuries and their families. I previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Exeter evaluating health and social care programmes.