'I worry how the
political chaos
will affect the
ABI Strategy'

Here, the prominent MP and champion of change discusses the development of the ABI Strategy to date, why it is so badly needed, and his own personal motivation for his unrelenting commitment to supporting brain injury survivors

When you think of brain injury campaigning and those committed to making change, Chris Bryant MP will almost certainly be one of the first names that come to mind. 
A champion of changing the reality for so many people living with brain injury across the UK, his efforts were crucial in the Government - specifically the Boris Johnson administration, and then-health secretary Sajid Javid - giving the go-ahead for an ABI Strategy. 
The Strategy is seen as potentially a huge step forward in brain injury support and provision in the community, which will help to tackle the ‘postcode lottery’ of access to resources that hamper the recovery potential of so many people every day - resources that have been squeezed even further since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. 
However, while the ABI Strategy was given the green light by Javid in late 2021, the political and economic landscape has changed massively in the short time since, and political turmoil continues to ensue. 

After the disastrous Liz Truss Premiership and the ongoing implications of the infamous ‘Mini Budget’, the country faces huge economic challenges, as well as an array of spending cuts set to be introduced in the near future with the aim of helping to balance the books and regain some stability. 
While current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appears to have brought some degree of calm after the storm, the changes continue, and particularly with regard to the impact on the ABI Strategy. 
Two health secretaries later - the brief appointment of Therese Coffey, replaced by current health secretary Steve Barclay - and a promotion to the Cabinet for Bryant’s co-chair of the Strategy, now education secretary Gillian Keegan, who will no longer be working on the ABI Strategy, continues to cast doubt on its progress. 
Clearly the situation is very different now to when Johnson and his Government - who Bryant famously and continuously held to account - were in power. Is this huge change a concern for the future of the ABI Strategy?
“Yes, I am very worried about that,” Bryant, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on ABI, tells NR Times. 
“I desperately want us to move forward on this. But I do worry that the chaos in government, let alone what they're doing with the economy, is going to provide problems for us.”

The ABI Strategy - the journey so far
The gaps in provision for people living with brain injury is well known and well documented, and survivors across the country can face missing out on vital resources because of where they live. 
Keen to address this, yet with efforts to lobby the Government into action unsuccessful, Bryant introduced a Private Members’ Bill to seek to force the creation of a strategy by law, which would support a more joined-up approach across Government departments and across the country to improve survivors’ lives. 
While charities and campaigners gathered behind the ABI Bill, visiting Downing Street to deliver a petition to show the level of support, the Bill was about to go to its Second Reading
in the Commons - when suddenly the Government conceded and asked Bryant to co-chair the development of the ABI Strategy. 
How did such a swift turnaround come about? 
“I must have intimidated Sajid Javid,” smiles Bryant. 
“We had a meeting and I said ‘If I take it to the House, I’ll win the vote. So what are you going to do?’
“He told me he was going to prove we didn’t need the legislation because they were going to introduce a strategy anyway. Three weeks later, they came back and asked me to co-chair it with the Government minister.”
Since then, a Call for Evidence has heard the personal and professional accounts of people across the spectrum of brain injury, and Bryant himself has toured the country visiting key neuro-rehabilitation sites to see first-hand the work being done and to identify what more is needed. 
The last word from the Government on the ABI Strategy was some months ago, when indications were that it would be unveiled in ‘early 2023’ - although the impact of the political turmoil remains to be seen. 

Brain injury - the current situation
The ‘postcode lottery’ of care and access to services is one of the biggest challenges facing survivors, with NHS provision differing greatly even within the same regions of the UK. 
“It’s very, very patchy,” agrees Bryant, MP for the Rhondda.
“Sometimes, you'll get really good help in the major trauma centre, which might save your life. And you might have really good acute services for a few weeks. 
“But then when you need neuro-rehabilitation, the therapists aren't available, or they’re not available often enough to make a real difference.
“When you leave hospital, it might be the case that you're done, the local area might have absolutely nothing, whereas some
other areas will be really well provided.
So it's a complete lottery. 
“The other thing that matters is whether or not you get compensation from insurance. In some cases, there's a no fault accident, so there’s no compensation, and then your access to resources differs greatly."
Attitudes to brain injury are also badly in need of change, says Bryant, even though statistics that one in three people will sustain brain injury at some point in their lives show the huge and growing scale of how widely it affects. 
“I think awareness is very, very poor,” says Bryant. 
“If you're standing behind somebody in a queue at the supermarket, for example, you might think that the person in front of you is drunk, because they're slurring their speech. 
“But it may be because they've had a brain injury that you have no knowledge of, because it's not like other injuries, where there's maybe an injury or evidence on the outside. 
“Sometimes, teachers are great with a kid who's had a brain injury for a couple of months after the brain injury. But a year later, when the child suffers from later symptoms from the brain injury, it gets completely forgotten. And so the child gets treated as if they're naughty in class. “It’s very important we change this, and this comes through awareness.”

The need for a strategy
Through the creation of the ABI Strategy, survivors would see a more joined-up approach to care and accessing the resources they need - something that typically proves very challenging. 
Bryant is clear on what steps need to be taken to establish provision and then make change. 
“First of all, we've got to know the real lay of the land. You know how many, how many doctors we've got, how many people are affected, what different categories they are, what support there is for children, for instance,” he says. 
“Secondly, we've got to get a much better impression of where the research is taking us. Because there are major, groundbreaking changes in research coming through, and we just need to make sure that they're fed through. 
“But the most important thing is making sure that there's a national strategy, which covers all the different departments.
So Ministry of Defence, education, housing, Treasury, Home Office, and literally every department of government. That's why the programme board is so important, because you've got everybody there.”

But while the picture in brain injury support can be quite negative, Bryant points to the advances made through campaigning to date, but what is left to do - and the impact
the ABI Strategy could make.
“We've got screening of people when they arrive in prison. They’re screening for people when they have been in a domestic violence situation as well. Some people don’t understand that this directly impacts the prison population, a large number of them have had brain injuries,” he says. 
“So we’ve done some things already.
But what I’d like to see is more education for those assessing people for benefits, because I don't think they understand brain injury, how the symptoms can ebb and flow.
“But the single biggest thing is the workforce strategy for the future. Because if you haven’t got enough physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and psychiatrists, the support will always be patchy. And that's a shame. We save more lives, but I want to give people back a quality of life as well.”