ITHACA, N.Y. — A new program to help Tompkins County Whole Health (TCWH) clients who experience symptoms of a traumatic or acquired brain injury is cleared to start a Brain Injury Pilot Program this fall.
Physical therapy (PT), occupational therapy (OT) and speech-language pathology services administered by Ithaca College faculty and students will be offered in the pilot program. The college will donate its services to TCWH and the clinic will be located at the Whole Health Mental Health Services building on East Green Street.
The Tompkins County legislature passed the authorization to accept the college’s donation of services at their July 16 meeting.
The services will be available for existing clients of the TCWH Outpatient Clinic and Personalized Recovery Oriented Services program who receive treatment for mental health and substance use disorders, according to the memorandum of understanding to establish the pilot program.
TCWH Deputy Commissioner of Mental Health and Director of Community Services Harmony Ayers-Friedlander said the program idea started by analyzing the needs of people being released from jail. She said offering these brain injury clinic services in the same building as the county’s mental health services will help individuals who are struggling.
“There are certain people that we just struggled to help provide services for because, while they clearly have mental health needs or people have said they have mental health needs, there seem to be these underlying factors that we’re not trained to address,” Ayers-Friedlander said, adding that these Ithaca College specialists will now be able to help.
Brain injuries can have a wide ranging set of symptoms depending on the severity of the injury according to the Centers for Disease Control. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke details how symptoms can be physical, cognitive, behavioral, and effect perception and sensation.
Ithaca College staff and students will provide an interdisciplinary program with PT, OT and speech-language pathology services in the upcoming brain injury pilot program to complement any mental health and substance use treatment a client may be receiving through the county.
Ithaca College Physical Therapy Instructor Angela Di Francesco said the PT will focus on movement and endurance. Meanwhile, the OT will focus on daily living activities and the speech therapy will help with the thinking, language and cognition component of symptoms a client might be experiencing.
Julie Dorsey, associate dean of the Ithaca College School of Health Sciences and Human Performance, said this partnership will offer students another opportunity for hands-on practice with clients while helping address unmet needs in the community.
“This came from a true need of saying there’s a gap in what Tompkins County provides and here we are as a partner who can help meet that gap,” Dorsey said. “It’s such an incredible benefit for our students too to do real life, real world [work] addressing community needs.”
This pilot will give Ithaca College students an experiential learning opportunity and earn them academic credit. The college currently offers multiple labs and clinics for hands-on students learning, including a PT/OT clinic and speech-language pathology clinic on campus. The college also runs a Center For Life Skills program with Longview which helps community participants who have experienced a stroke.
Di Francesco said the services at the new pilot program location downtown will likely be more accessible to more clients than the current Ithaca College clinics offered on campus and at Longview. Di Francesco said a soft launch of the program will start in the fall semester to recruit students, meet with clients and develop a framework with a more formal framework starting in the spring.