What can SHIPS do for parents?
Parents know their child best and can be the young person's best advocate, but sometimes they need support in their role. SHIPS can provide a link between the hospital and the school. Parents, education and health staff working together can increase understanding of this complex injury and achieve the best outcome for each young person.
How do you contact us?
The parent support group and helpline are the usual way for parents (and schools) to contact us for further assistance once you are part of the project, however email is preferred as we can then respond promptly when we get back to the office.
Parent Support Groups
We run parent support groups when and where they are needed. There has been a group in Weston-super-Mare for several years, meeting at The Bucket and Spade. These children have now mostly grown into young adults and the need for the group has diminished.
More recently parents in Bath and Bristol have expressed a wish to get together and a very active group is meeting in The Talbot, Keynsham, roughly on a monthly basis.
The groups are informally run, with parents setting the topics, or requesting information which is then brought to the next meeting.
Advice for parents:
Education begins at home and parents as well as teachers sometimes need assistance and advice to help their young person to be able to learn both social skills and academically. Click on the links below for specific advice:
- After School with ABI
- Use of Routines
- Helping with homework
- Dealing with Bullying
- Behaviour management
- Fatigue and Sleep after ABI
- Revision strategies after ABI
Synapse, Australia has two fact sheets on sleep. You can access them here.
A good night's sleep after ABI
Sleeping issues after a brain injury
Sometimes it is difficult to talk to your child about the injury and looking after themselves now. 'A message from your brain' is designed to help you do this. It is for you to read with your child, in the form of a social story. It is aimed at children. All the adults around the young person will need to do this so that the child knows that everyone is on board with the messages. This story is adapted from an article in ABI The Facts published by Synapse Australia
You can download the story for younger children here.
Here is the original article from The Facts, which is aimed at older teenagers and adults.
