HATs Nurses
Shocked and appalled at Headway UKs plans to withdraw funding for the HATs nurses. When my husband had a brain injury I don’t think I would of survived it without the support and education from our HATs nurse Kerry.
After raising money and encouraging friends to support headway Uk I feel so annoyed that the one service we have available in the area is being stripped.
I intend to write to the CEO tomorrow but felt others should know about this now.
When my partner was in Preston hospital, my HATs nurse was so valuable to me! I am shocked to hear what's happening. 😔
In response to the comments on this thread we thought it would be useful to clarify the situation.
As we announced to our members in July at our AGM, the loss of the Big Lottery Fund grant which has supported the Headway Acute Trauma Support (HATS) service for several years, has necessitated a need to review the project.
We are currently in talks with several hospital trusts to ascertain if they could fund the service in the future to meet our long-term strategic objective of providing equality service provision across the UK.
Further information will follow in due course.
Just WOW! The Headway nurses are invaluable to families - to not fund them, and to not make the service sustainable is just poor management...3 years they have had to make it so - the response from Headway seems to be a holding response - this is a core service that should be met from core funds. According to the Annual Accounts available from Companies House, they have £2.4m available in unrestricted reserves....and yet they will not look at pump prime this service.
I know people have donated to Headway Hats service and some organisations have directly fundraised for them (I gave money towards it in Birmingham).
Come on Headway, get it funded from core funds as it a demonstrable good use of charitable funds - we are brain injured not stupid, after all you seemed to find funds for the unnecessary position of Deputy CEO .......just saying🤔
Count yourself lucky to have had a HATS nurse, nothing like this exists in Wales.
Or even London! I think there is only a few HATs nurses and only in a few Hospitals or at least that’s what I remember from from the talk one of them did last years Headway conference.
I did think at the time would probably helped both myself and my wife at the time of my injury.
Unfortunately I can’t see trusts funding many. But hopefully I’m just being cynical!
Amazing what you can find out in public records. According to Big Lottery Awards Register Headway were awarded £750k for the HATS project. If I remember correctly it was to initially employ 4 nurses and someone to oversee the management of them. There is one in Birmingham, one in Teesside, one in the North West and one in Hull.
Will look further into the original application, but I would have thought that it would have been natural for this Service to expand into Trauma Centres across the UK.
Absolutely! !without any doubts. ,please keep us informed of any actions towards this motion.
I was in that conference!
I did wonder as there was a fairly large group of North Welsh! But since my ability to recognise/remember folks is pants I wasn’t sure!
We are lucky we know this but services should be getting steppe but expanded surely?!
Just found out that they have made the Manager of the Hats Service redundant - bizarre! That is not a good sign😔
another service I never heard off. Would love to know why I was treated so appallingly during and after my near death stroke.
You can count on my supports to maintains this wonderful +vital services. By the way are those Nurse's; "HATs, are the Nurses whiches answers the phone, true the helpline? ?,please educates me.
I believe the Headway Acute Trauma Services Nurses are completely separate from the staff that man the Headway Helpline.
According to the Headway website there are 3 HATs nurses in post - one in Teesside (James Cook Hospital), one in the North West (Salford, I presume), and my very own in the QE, Birmingham.
There should be a forth nurse. If my memory serves me correctly, there was one in Hull, but that post seems vacant.
Given the fantastic support these nurses provide families, (certainly in my case), and the reduction of burden on acute staff at the hospitals concerned, you would have thought it would have been common sense for Headway to dip their hand into their reserves to at least part fund the roles and to negotiate with the trusts to fund the rest.
I hope this is helpful.
Thanks for your kindness in replying to my email, would you please be kind enough to clarifies; what's the functions of a HART's nurses? ,as I have never heard of them, Gratefully, hope you and your family have a pleasant day Gratefully
I believe their main function is to support the families of people who are in the acute phase in Trauma Centres following traumatic brain injury.
These liaise between the relevant departments/staff to keep the family informed of what is happening and exploring options on discharge etc - I am sure there is a lot more they do and they probably go above and beyond what they are paid - ours did (she was more engaged than any of the NHS staff).
Hopefully someone else can add to this....
we need more done
People need real support, not just a phone number.
Charity Funding
New to headway
