MAKING A DIFFERENCE : One College’s Approach: Low-cost Help for Adults With Head Injuries

Each year more than 700,000 people suffer head injuries severe enough to require hospitalization. Intellectual, physical and behavioral problems prevent thousands of those injured from resuming even a semblance of their normal lives. Specialists in the field call the problem a “silent epidemic” and bemoan a shortage of affordable programs for those left suddenly disabled by the memory disturbances, language disabilities, behavioral problems and loss of reasoning skills caused by these injuries. A model for alleviating the problem can be found at Orange County’s Coastline Community College, which developed a low-cost educational program for traumatically head-injured adults 15 years ago. The school’s Traumatic Head-Injury Program was the first of its kind.

More than two dozen instructors, counselors, aides and interns guide students through two intensive years of courses aimed at enhancing remaining cognitive and social abilities and academic and vocational skills. Similar programs offered through research universities or hospitals around the country can cost thousand of dollars a month. Students in Coastline’s cognitive retraining and resocialization program pay no more than $50 per unit each semester, primarily because of state funding support and federal, state and private grants and fund-raising. More than 600 students have graduated from the Traumatic Head-Injury Program, parts of which have been copied by other community colleges statewide.

ONE PARTICIPANT’S EXPERIENCE

Melanie Wilkinson, 39 years old

Sustained brain injury in August, 1990. Graduated from Coastline Community College’s Traumatic Head Injury Program in June, 1993.

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I wouldn’t be where I am today without the program. I owned my own business and was a tile setter. I lost my business. I’m still not working full-time.

About a month after my injury I was just beginning to walk again and was barely speaking and I learned about the program. I had no idea what they did but I called.

When (you’re injured) you feel like you are absolutely alone in the world. At the school it amazed me that a whole bunch of people were going through what I was going through, and they understood exactly what I was feeling--the anger, the loss, the frustration, the fear that your body doesn’t work and you can’t say the words that you think of because they just won’t come. There’s a feeling of solidarity.

I figured I was never going to be able to be retrained because I had no money. I had no insurance because I owned my own business and couldn’t afford it. The good works they do for the little money that they charge is amazing. When I think of tax dollars working this way it makes my heart go all warm and fuzzy. We are people who by and large otherwise would never be able to get the help we need.

I’m transferring next semester to San Jose State to study for a bachelor’s degree in occupational therapy. I would have never chosen that before (but) through testing and counseling and firm nudges at the college, the suggestion was made that I could do other things besides set tile. I’m jazzed, thrilled, scared to death.

I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t gone through the program. I would have taken any job that came along. I would definitely have been lost out there.

PROGRAM CONTENT

The Traumatic Head injury program consists of five sequential courses, each of them four days a week for several hours a day:

1. Orientation, Attention, Concentration and Psycho-Motor Skills

2. Perceptual-Cognitive Processing

3. Organizational and Conceptualization Skills

4. Logical Reasoning and Problem-Solving

5. Community Transition, Work Experience and Volunteer Experience

During the first four courses, students enroll concurrently in Interact, a series of courses focusing on psycho-social skills.

THE NEED FOR MORE

Lynn Gondorcin

Program Manager at St. Jude Brain Injury Network in Fullerton--one of four programs mandated by the state seatbelt law to provide long-term case management for traumatically brain-injured people

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We started in 1990 and since then this office alone has had 900 phone calls from people who need help. We’re supposed to prove that long-term case management in a continuum of care will get people with traumatic brain injuries back into the community, (but) there are very few services.

Once your medical insurance runs out there are no government programs for brain-injured people. There’s no funding stream for brain injured people in the State of California unless you have been injured on the job. (Those with) brain injuries from car accidents, drownings, cancer, brain surgery, strokes are out of luck once they’re stabilized at a hospital and go home.

The community college system, and Coastline in particular, are vital organizations for the people I work with who have a range of problems and have no other support. From what I’ve seen the best thing the state of California has going for (traumatically head injured people) is its community college programs. Without them, many would have no way back into the mainstream, no hope for rehabilitation. Many would surely be on the welfare rolls and be nonproductive citizens.

TO GET INVOLVED

For information about Coastline Community College’s Traumatic Head-Injury Program call (714) 751-9776 or contact Special Programs and Services for the Disabled, Coastline Community College, 2990 Mesa Verde Drive East, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.

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Compiled by Times researcher CATHERINE GOTTLIEG LAUREL DAUNIS/For The Times