March is Brain Injury Awareness Month. The theme for the 2015 to 2017 campaign is: Not Alone.
The Not Alone campaign provides a platform for educating the general public about the incidence of brain injury in the U.S. and the needs of people with brain injuries and their families. The campaign also lends itself to outreach within the brain injury community to de-stigmatize the injury, empower those who have survived, and promote the many types of support that are available.
The Job Accommodation Network has just released a brain injury training module this month in conjunction with the national awareness campaign. This module will be helpful to employers, employees, family members, and others who are interested in information on the potential impact of a brain injury on an employee’s experience in the workplace. In particular, the module presents information on effective accommodations that can be provided to help employees with brain injuries be more successful in the workplace. Our hope is that this training module will educate and promote a better understanding of brain injuries and the impact they have on employment.
In this module, you will find information on:
- Disclosing a brain injury to an employer;
- Understanding the three reasons why it might be necessary to disclose a disability and how to go about doing so;
- Learning about the medical information that may be required by the employer;
- Discovering effective accommodations for physical and visual limitations and difficulties with maintaining stamina and concentration;
- Exploring accommodation options for organizational and problem-solving challenges, as well as memory difficulties and handling change, stress, and emotions.
Real-life situations and solutions are interspersed throughout the module to help show how practical and successful accommodations can be.
In addition to the training module, the JAN Website includes a variety of resources on accommodations ideas for brain Injury in the workplace.
