Page 30 - Healthcare News Sep/Oct 2022

HEALTHCARE HEROES OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS
COLLABORATION IN HEALTH/WELLNESS
ServiceNet’s Enrichment Center
and Strive Clinic and Its Partners at Springfield College and UMass Amherst
Helping People with Brain Injuries Maintain Function Is a Unique
Group Effort
EBy Kailey Houle
llen Werner has been helping people with acquired brain injuries for decades.
But since she arrived at ServiceNet a decade ago, she’s learned how powerful collaboration can be in serving this population that often falls through the cracks in today’s
healthcare system.
Werner’s work with ABI patients began in Pennsylvania, at one
of the first dedicated brain-injury rehabilitation programs in the country, Bryn Mawr Rehab. After moving to Massachusetts, she did homeless outreach through the Statewide Head Injury Program that was created in 1985. “I was trying to find people in shelters that had brain injuries and needed proper medical care and housing.”
When she was approached by the then-vice president of ServiceNet to help launch its Enrichment Center in 2013, she was intrigued; the center helps people with brain injuries to become more functional and engaged with others and their community.
“I had some kind of an understanding of what I wanted to do for these people and what kind of opportunities I wanted to be able to provide them,” said Werner. “But I just didn’t know how we were going to afford therapies. The agency had already put in a lot of money just opening the program, so that’s when I started sending out messages. Springfield College was the first to respond to them.”
Today, the Enrichment Center and ServiceNet’s Strive Clinic in West Springfield — day programs for adults with brain injury caused by trauma or medical conditions — actively collaborate with two area academic institutions to provide outstanding rehabilitative care, while helping train the healthcare professionals of tomorrow.
This work began in 2014 when Werner, director of Operations at the Enrichment Center and Strive Clinic, met with leaders of the Occupational Therapy program at Springfield College to develop an innovative model of community-based care that would bring
in graduate students, under the direction of their instructors
and on-site clinical staff, to work with clients on a variety of OT modalities. The model proved so successful that this partnership expanded in 2017 to involve the Communications Disorders program at UMass Amherst’s School of Public Health & Health Sciences in developing and providing speech-language pathology services at the Enrichment Center.
Since she facilitated those partnerships with Springfield College and UMass Amherst to better serve people with ABIs, the program has grown from a small group of students and instructors to a full- fledged clinical team.
Lisa Sommers, clinical director and clinical associate professor
Leah Martin Photography
“I had some kind of an understanding of what I wanted to do for these people and what kind of opportunities I wanted to be able to provide them.”
A16 2022
2022 HEALTHCARE HEROES