Staff Appreciation Post: Patricia Branco

We have an incredible team of Rehabilitation Coaches at the Laura Fergusson Brain Injury Trust. You may be asking, what does a rehabilitation coach do? And the answer is, a whole lot, and a varied lot! Today we’d like to celebrate the work of Patricia Branco!

As a rehab coach, Patricia works in our Living My Life service, which supports clients with their goals, how they live, what they do, and who with. Along with this, Patricia works with some clients under Training for Independence programmes, which target and develop aspects of life that a client may want to focus on building.

Working in these services means day-to-day work is never the same for Patricia, as each client has a different goal, and a different method of achieving each goal. For some clients, it can be helping with exercise, joining a session with one of our physiotherapists, and learning the exercises with the client. Then moving forward, Patricia can help run through each exercise, at the client's home, or at the gym.

On the other end of the scale, Patricia has clients whose goal is to become familiar with the bus system in Christchurch. This meant going out and bussing around town together, learning routes and what to do if they change.

“So the rehabilitation coach is there to support clients with their specific goals,” says Patricia. “We come in with strategies - sometimes bring a strategy and it doesn’t work, then you try to find another strategy that will suit this person more. The more you know the client, the easier it is to find the right solution.”

At any one time, Patricia will have twelve clients that she works with. Patricia is also part of our Reconnect service, where groups of clients come together with those who have had similar experiences to go out to participate in activities together. There is a group every morning, Monday to Friday. They may go bowling, head to the museum, and quite often visit a local cafe! Patricia is a regular member of the Friday group, and enjoys joining the group and helping with their adventures.

“I have passion for working with people. It's very rewarding to think about the impact you can have on someone's life. The thing I enjoy most is building a connection with people. One of my clients who I work with on Thursday recently said to me ‘my favorite day of the week now is Thursday.’ To have this feedback from them, to know we are achieving our goals is so great.”

“What we want is to empower our clients, in no way do we want this connection to turn into dependencies on us. We try to make sure they are as independent as possible.”

A huge part of helping clients to be independent is encouragement to try new things, something that Patricia finds incredibly fulfilling. A recent example was encouraging a client to try a new class at the gym, which led to joining even more classes, and ultimately, a person who has a new confidence in going out and living life to the fullest.

“If our clients didn’t have these activities, or people to support, encourage and teach them things that they couldn’t initially do by themselves, it might never happen. It is great to be there for them.”

A huge thank you to Patricia for her essential work! It is so wonderful to have you on the team and to share what you do in your role.