Episode 62: Shaped by the Unexpected with Alexa Locke

What is something about TBI, and it could be many things, do you have anything that you think people really need to understand more about TBI, how people maybe perceive people with TBI going back into the workforce or just like going back into the community or... because I don't think we've ever actually had a proper conversation about that either.

We talk a lot about physical disability and the difficulty of navigating physical disability, but when you've got a traumatic brain injury, it's like a different, it's different, right?

Well, it's invisible to start with.

You know, you can't just look at someone and, you know, you see a wheelchair user and rightly or wrongly you make assumptions about someone's, ability to move around the world.

I think one of the hardest things I've noticed with clients with traumatic brain injury is them needing to decide whether or not they want to disclose their disability to people, but also whether they even identify as having a disability.

And the way recruitment processes often work is employers will say, you know, do you have any disabilities or health conditions? And I know dad often says, oh, you know, 20 something years ago, I had a brain injury.

But I got back to work and I'm okay now.

Now, it doesn't mean that the long-lasting impacts of that brain injury have gone away, but he's found ways to adjust.

I've worked with many, many people over the years with TBI who are able to function really well in a workplace.

I think they often struggle if they haven't disclosed that they need a little bit of extra help in some areas.

So sometimes it's things like, hey, don't just give me the instructions verbally.

Could you send me an email so that then I've got something to refer back to? Or maybe they struggle with working in a big open plan office environment because the ability to concentrate on what they're doing has been impacted.

Maybe they need to start their work day a bit later in the day and finish up a bit later in the day Maybe they need extra breaks.

They don't know how to ask the questions.

They're worried about getting it wrong And then I found the clients that I work with they're kind of scared of saying hey look I can do this whole job But I just need you to do the training in a slightly different way or I need you to give me instructions in a different way or maybe the way I hear feedback has changed a little bit but

I think people might think that the deviation is such a huge adjustment that it's almost like in the too hard basket, I guess.

What did your father end up doing when he went back to employment? Did he do the same engineering work?

So he was a project manager pre-injury.

He went back to project management.

He did that job for about six or seven years

and then he got made redundant.

The business that he was working for moved all of their manufacturing offshore and the job just didn't exist anymore.

He struggled the hardest trying to find a job after the redundancy.

So by that stage he was in his early 50s.

He had been in quite a senior role previously and so his reflection is part of his struggle to find a job was that he was a very well-paid older male and so there was a reduced job pool.