Client(s):
Administration for Community Living
Traumatic Brain Injury Technical Assistance and Resource Center
Supporting timely, coordinated services for brain injury
The Traumatic Brain Injury Technical Assistance and Resource Center (TBI TARC) is a national center funded by the Administration for Community Living. HSRI is serving as the Center’s administrator along with NASHIA, helping states promote access to integrated, coordinated services and supports for people who have sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI), their families, and their caregivers. The Center will also provide resources to a wide variety of stakeholders.
Impact
TBI can be chronic and progressive, but timely access to proper interventions and community services can lessen its impact on people’s lives. By pooling our collective knowledge of TBI, person-centered systems design, and available resources, we’re helping states develop strong and sophisticated infrastructures to supply these services.
Services
- Technical Assistance and Training
- Systems Design
- Quality Improvement
Integrating and coordinating services
Human services play a key role in ensuring that all people can reach their potential. Traumatic brain injury can be complex and may affect people throughout their lifetime; and since TBI can produce an especially wide spectrum of symptoms and disabilities, people living with TBI may need access to variety of services to reach their potential. To better understand these complexities, funding agencies, researchers, and people with lived experience of TBI are teaming up to gather better evidence that will support practice recommendations and improve treatment. And through ACL’s TBI State Partnership Program, states are collaborating to determine how best to provide these services.
Streamlining access and ensuring quality
States often serve individuals living with brain injury through multiple programs—Medicaid, employment, education, mental health, substance abuse, long-term care, and more. Coordination among these programs is essential for several reasons:
- Improve access to community-based services. Without coordination, getting services can be an overwhelming challenge for people and their caregivers—logistically, financially, and psychologically.
- Track availability. States need to know if certain factors are affecting the availability of services in certain communities (factors like geographic limitations, lack of transportation, scarcity of affordable housing, etc.).
- Enhance provider training. Enhancing training and education across providers and disciplines can help ensure the quality and consistency of services statewide.
- Plan and monitor for quality and outcomes. Coordinated data systems can help states link people to available services (reaching out to people recently hospitalized for TBI), plan for and estimate the number of people needing services, and follow up with people with TBI to see how they’re faring.
Leading with experience
To assist the cross-state collaborations and help maximize the impact of ACL’s TBI State Partnership Program, HSRI and the National Association of State Head Injury Administrators (NASHIA) are administering the new Traumatic Brain Injury Technical Assistance and Resource Center—contributing their longtime expertise and wide networks in the areas of person-centered system design, TBI, technical assistance, and state resources.
People with lived experience receiving TBI services and other subject matter experts will be helping to guide and oversee TBI TARC activities, ensuring that states’ service system transformations are person-centered. These experts by experience are uniquely positioned to help plan and develop services and supports that encourage both community inclusion and the personal independence of people with TBI.