INS clients live with a variety of neurological conditions that can often be severe and variable. Our work reduces loneliness and depression which contributes to improved well-being in our clients and carers. Comments from clients include: "INS has provided me the tools to help me challenge my illness and understand what it is doing to me and what I can do for myself.. I'd be lost without INS” and “I wouldn’t be here talking to you today if it weren’t for INS”.
After providing acute hospital care, the NHS can only fund limited support in the community for a few weeks for people with these conditions – after that people are left to cope on their own. Patients with neurological conditions have the lowest health related quality of life of any long-term condition. At INS we use a holistic approach to deliver a range of integrated clinical services and social and emotional therapeutic support. A key outcome of our services is to enable people to remain as active as possible to ensure that they stay engaged with their communities, do not become isolated from their social networks and to enable them to develop new connections that can support both their physical and emotional needs.
INS employs a multi-disciplinary team providing physiotherapy, occupational therapy (OT), speech and language therapy (SLT), and social work support. Other therapy, activities and administrative staff also form an essential part of the team, supported by experienced and dedicated volunteers including skilled counsellors.
I heard about INS from a friend and she encouraged me to refer myself. I’d been diagnosed with Multiple sclerosis (MS) a year before but was still really struggling to cope with it and how it would change my life. The ‘Taking Back Control’ group run by INS occupational therapists helped me to find ways of dealing with the emotional effects of my MS. Read more