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Too Many to Count is the first study in the United Kingdom to explore the prevalence of brain injury in domestic abuse survivors accessing community-based services.
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Home / International Women’s Day: How Brainkind supports women with brain injuries
by Steffy Bechelet, our Domestic Abuse and Brain Injury Researcher
For International Women’s Day, Steffy Bechelet, our Domestic Abuse and Brain Injury Researcher, explores the work that Brainkind is doing to support women, especially in those who have experienced domestic abuse or are impacted by the criminal justice system.
International Women’s Day (March 8th) celebrates the achievements of women and calls for accelerating women’s equality. This year’s theme, Accelerating Change, aligns perfectly with one of Brainkind’s key commitments of raising awareness and making positive social change focusing on brain injury in the context of domestic abuse and women’s experiences in the criminal justice system.
Brainkind’s research, “Too Many to Count,” is the first of its kind in the UK. It explored the potential prevalence of brain injury among domestic abuse survivors accessing community-based services.
The study revealed that one in two people who have experienced domestic abuse may have a potential brain injury, which can impact everything including mood, memory, mobility and almost every area of life.
The study also found significant overlap between brain injury and mental health symptoms, highlighting the need for improved awareness of brain injury symptoms and care across sectors supporting survivors, so that they can get the care that they need to properly recover. You can read the full report here.
Following these findings, Brainkind partnered with Women’s Aid Federation of England to add questions about brain injury causes to their case management system, OnTrack, helping us to understand the experiences of domestic abuse survivors.
By collecting this data, we hope to have a clearer understanding of the potential causes of brain injury among women facing domestic abuse. You can read about our joint webinar on this work here.
Last month, Steffy also took part in The Charity Show podcast with Hannah Williams from Women’s Aid.
On the podcast episode we discussed our collaboration to gather crucial data on brain injury and domestic abuse, our joint webinar on this work, and emphasised the importance of cross-sector partnerships in driving positive social change. You can listen to the podcast here or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
As part of Brainkind’s next steps focused on the connections between brain injury and domestic abuse, we’re developing Brainkind Adapt, a web-based tool to support professionals in domestic abuse specialist organisations to have structured conversations with people they are supporting about potential brain injury signs and symptoms, as well as thinking about how they can adapt the way they work.
This will be transformative for professionals being able to adapt their practice for domestic abuse survivors with the support they need to better understand navigate their experiences, and the lasting impact that this may have on them. It will empower them to seek the care they need, and to provide context to difficulties they may be facing as the result of a potential brain injury.
Brainkind’s Complex Lives report focused on women in the Criminal Justice System (CJS) in Wales and found that 80% of participants have a history indicative of brain injury, many of whom have experienced domestic abuse and or violence.
It also confirms what many similar studies have found; women in contact with the CJS face marginalisation, and exclusion.
Coupled with these new findings on rates of brain injury, this begins to illustrate how challenging navigating the CJS might be, and why we need to bring brain injury into the conversation. You can read the report here.
Changes might not happen overnight, but every conversation about brain injury is a step forward. At Brainkind we’re committed to creating and sharing lasting solutions for social change. If you’d like to join us in making change, get in touch at Stephanie.bechelet@brainkind.org.
