THE ARNI INSTITUTE
This organization has already been registered
Someone in your organization has already registered and setup an account. would you like to join their team?Profile owner : t*m@a**i.uk.c*m
Mission Statement
Formal Objects from Deed 1. To encourage and advance the rehabilitation of members of the public suffering from the effects of stroke, and other brain injuries which have resulted in partial paralysis. Particularly by the physical training of patients who require recovery programmes. Such training will enable those who have suffered brain injuries progressively to recover movement, balance, physical strength and confidence. b) By improving and developing public awareness that brain injury survivors require extra help to fulfil their potential to get better, after physiotherapy rehabilitation has finished.
About This Cause
It’s only when a member of the family suffers a brain injury: acquired (most often, stroke) or traumatic brain injury (most often road traffic accidents), resulting in a host of sequalae including partial paralysis, that they realise how very patchy, non-existent or ineffective the community services actually are after hospital services finish. We have found ourselves concentrating mainly on stroke, because an astonishing 170,000 people per year have a stroke in England. In the US, 795,000 people have a stroke per year, leaving millions residing with the effects of stroke. The problem is huge. Each year, in England alone, stroke costs the NHS and the economy about £7 billion a year: £2.8 billion direct health and social care costs; £1.8 billion to the wider community in terms of lost productivity and of disability; and £2.4 billion in costs to informal carers (National Audit Office 2005). The problem that we tackle is that NHS hospital services disappear very quickly – early discharges are encouraged and sometimes after 6 weeks of 45 minutes rehab per week from a community therapist, people who have had a stroke are left completely to their own devices. This usually results in quick-declines, falls leading to re-hospitalisation, learned non-use of limbs, early death etc. The situation is absolutely dire .For families, the limitations from stroke are usually life-shattering and life-long unless a powerful intervention such as ARNI is implemented. We use the phrase ‘one stroke, two survivors’, meaning that although one person suffers a stroke, the close family is always affected as dramatically. They become ‘carers’ – yet they may be elderly themselves. Young children also have strokes and are not taught to ‘train’ their way out of stroke limitations. Families are horrified to be told by specialists that their loved one ‘will never move an arm or leg again, for example’. And then find that there is no effective rehabilitation help made available for people that really makes a retained difference out there as ‘therapy’ most often implies ‘someone doing something to make you better’. Most survivors therefore hardly come close to realizing the potential of their amazing ‘neuroplastic brains’, however young or old. When we look at ‘what’s out there?’, there is certainly lots of information (the National Stroke Association excel in their effectiveness with this, amongst other successful campaigns and initiatives of theirs, particularly the FAST campaign and the way they fund innovative research). And there is some very expensive and sometimes fairly passive/ineffective physiotherapy to be bought. What does not exist, worldwide (which is why we have patients from the US and other countries from round the world fly patients and therapists in to work with us) except through ARNI mobilizing a whole other ‘tier’ of professionals to support the work done by the hospitals (which has to, unfortunately stop very quickly after discharge due to time and resources), is low-cost or free rehabilitation that is nevertheless extremely powerful, which can teach the survivor and family how to help themselves and support this process until autonomy with rehab effort can be reached. So, we principally help people to help themselves. DR TOM BALCHIN (39): I’m the founder of ARNI - I personally had a serious subarachnoid haemorrgage in 1997 (one of the severest of strokes, but made a good enough recovery to be helping others informally by 1999). ARNI was set up in 2001 by me locally (in Lingfield, Surrey) to help people in the community with serious limitations from stroke. Still, we had people coming from as far away as Warwick weekly to attend! It was then registered formally as a Charity with Trust deed dated 17th July 2006, in response to a critical need which gets bigger each day. ARNI is now the only Charity in the UK which attempts to ensure that there is an increasing body of accredited, insured and committed professional exercise instructors and community therapists available to whom hospital therapists (and other healthcare professionals) can feel comfortable about referring directly when a patient emerges from hospital. A (more) seamless care-pathway is the ideal. Via my ARNI Associate Instructors, who deliver low-cost or free programmes of ‘re-training’ (which is NOT ‘rocket science’ at all), lives of these people and particularly the nearest and dearest of these people can be helped immeasurably. Not only can real action control and strength return, with many making near miraculous recoveries, but quality of life for all concerned is made so much better, as they discover that rehab (leading to self-rehab) is not only do-able, but can get people back to work and back to life again. We are talking about real-time change– getting people out of wheelchairs, out of ankle foot splints, off walking sticks, showing them how to get to the floor and up again by themselves, how to tackle a limitation called ‘spasticity’ in the affected hand, etc. I have a passion for it – and it’s all very ‘do-able’. I have ALWAYS been a volunteer at ARNI too: ARNI has a group of volunteers - and as I lead from the front with insisting that each and every pound raised in donations goes not on any wages at all, but directly to helping patients who need it (buying small items of equipment or funding classes etc, it is a fairly unique paradigm that works very well - although often we've been very short of funds, It works by just teaching more and more professionals to teach the innovative and evidence-based Approach I have created (and specialist physical trainers to upgrade their skill-sets to being able to teach action control recovery from brain-injury . There are by now thousands of people across the world who have used the ARNI Approach training to do significantly and measureably better – with retention of strategies learned, particularly as by 2011, I was able to release a comprehensive self-help manual (545 pages) with all my techniques and strategies for people after stroke to use. This is The Successful Stroke Survivor - available on Amazon - it has 70 or so 5 star reviews with only a couple of 4 star reviews - ARNI receives enquiries and referrals from Consultants, G.P.s, Nurses, other Physiotherapists, Speech and Language Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Social Workers, Family Liaison Workers, Psychologists, Case Managers and Solicitors. As well as from the national Stroke Association and all other smaller charities. ARNI receives a lot of self-referrals – and our Referrals Manager is able to successfully match up from 10 to 25 stroke survivors with its instructors per week. This is an extraordinary success story on a shoe-string. Here is the Jan 2015 Newsletter for you to read if you have a moment! http://www.arni.uk.com/ARNI%20Newsletter%20Jan%202015.pdf I have set up the only nationally Accredited Specialist Qualification in Stroke Rehabilitation, in conjunction with UCL, Middlesex University, London and Oxford Brookes Universities. The ARNI course (Functional Rehabilitation and Exercise Training after Stroke) Qualification is the only available accredited course for specialists to learn how to rehabilitate patients according to the latest evidence base. This is teaching therapists how to teach patients to perform real-time neuroplastic change via repetitive practice – just like learning any new skill. Since 1999, I have worked as a volunteer in order to set up a better system for patients. The ARNI Charity, as of 3/12015, has a total of 136 instructors and therapists who have fully Qualified, 51 of whom are called Associates (they have committed to an extra layer of internal scrutiny of regular CPD, insurance and commitment). 38 are on courses at various stages at the moment. I also have trainers in other countries who have come over here to Qualify: eg, Senior Instructor in California - http://www.f1rsttrainingcenter.com/ARNI.html . So, who are the beneficiaries of potential funds? People with brain injury (particularly stroke survivors) and their families. We help everyone, from the very young to the very old. Three weeks ago, a reception for instance was held for ARNI at 10 Downing Street, London, to which I was able to present lots of acquired brain injury survivors (including a 7 year old boy and his parents and an 88 year old lady) – all of whose lives had been changed by ARNI, as well as some of my therapists and a large number of the professionals in the Universities and Hospitals who help me do what I do, to the Prime Minister. We didn’t gain any funding from this, but it was great for the profile! As far as the recommended intervention is concerned, the person will have one to three sessions per week. The emphasis is on the powerful intervention; the one to one training/rehab in the person’s home or in a community gym. The reason is that most usually after stroke the person cannot get out and needs help to stand, gain balance, gait, trunk upper limb control and also build strength. What will the charity do with funds? In essence, we need staff and assistance to run free group classes and individual sessions very badly. Also, to produce a telerehabilitation system so patients in the US eaccess the professionals and services of ARNI Institute from laptopThe problem I’ve always had is that I have not been able to be effective at raising funds AND doing the vital work. So I’ve just done the vital work – for at least three years in the past subsidising the charity wholly myself. We are helped enormously by free Google Adwords, which allows people to find us, as we cannot afford marketing (but do need it!). ARNI needs to have sufficient instructors over the UK to provide the rehabilitation so desperately required, so increasing the number of instructors around the UK times three and introduce an incentive scheme to provide classes in local gym studios, village halls and church halls free of charge for those stroke survivors. The Charity requires knowledgeable half-paid, half-volunteers to be trained to man phone lines, also assistance to sustain free group classes and to create a telemedicine rehab system to reach patients worldwide...