Home › Day Centres › Brain Injury › Social Rehabilitation:

Daily Structures and Routines

Organising your lifeLearning to live independently at home again

There are a number of different types of memory problems associated with head injury, which cause a number of difficulties for the injured individual when attempting to manage daily living tasks independently.

For example:

  1. Post traumatic amnesia, is a temporary state, which occurs immediately after the injury. The individual in conscious and appears relatively normal, but everyday memory is not working at all. The individual may not remember what day or time it is, or what they had to eat that day. At a later date the individual will have no recollection of their time spent in PTA.
  2. Retrograde amnesia; refers to the experience when the individual cannot remember personal information and events from the time associated preceding the accident or of the accident itself. This form of memory loss stretches back from the accident for minutes, hours, days, and months or in some instances years. Some people gradually regain memories, but for others there is permanent loss.
  3. Short-term memory means that the individual has difficulty remembering new facts, names, faces, appointments or where they have placed things e.g. house keys. These problems disrupt all aspects of life, from work to Social and leisure activities.

The aims of introducing daily structures and routines are to assist the individual to cope with poor memory by using a number of external and internal strategies. Improvement occurs with practising using recall strategies and not by practising randomly. Memory is not a muscle that can be developed by stretching it.

Examples of external strategies to assist coping with poor memory:

  1. Diary.
  2. Wall calendar/planner.
  3. Labelling of household items.
  4. Lists of tasks requiring to be completed on a daily basis.
  5. Positioning objects, paperwork in an easily identifiable place e.g. filing system for storing bills, letters etc.
  6. Using notes/signs as reminders e.g. when leaving the kitchen a note on the door; "have you remembered to switch off the cooker";.
  7. Watches/alarm clocks, use as reminders e.g. to switch off the oven.

Budget and Money Management:

The aim of this activity is to assist the individual re-learn/develop an understanding of the value of money and to be able to make judgements and decisions about their financial affairs.

This also encourages individuals to:

  • Understand how they manage their money.
  • Consider their attitude towards money.
  • Understand the principles of basic money management.
  • Apply problem solving skills and decision-making skills.
  • To increase an awareness of further sources of help/assistance for better money advice.
  • To think about money management and to appreciate that it is something that they can do.

Related Articles