by John Copeland
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Open to anyone who has an acquired Brain Injury, BIEN is the Brain Injury Experience Network, and it’s right here in West Dunbartonshire.
It was formed in 2007 and even now, so many years later, it is still going strong!
BIEN holds meetings once a month in the Concord Centre, Dumbarton, and is open to anyone with Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) in the West Dunbartonshire area.
BIEN members congregate to talk about things they could do together, places they can go together, and anything else that might be collectively enjoyed.
From time to time, opportunities for providing free training to organisations about the effects of acquired brain injury also come up, and some members of BIEN do this too.
The BIEN group are savvy with Scottish culture – Culzean Castle, Scone Palace, Blair Drummond Safari Park, Stirling Castle, Inveraray Jail (!) among others, are places they’ve visited, and plans are always in the pipeline for other places and events to visit.
Lifetime Recovery
One of the reasons BIEN exists is to bring people with acquired brain injury out of isolation.
It’s no fun trying to find normality in recovery from a brain injury.
For many, recovery is an ongoing process for a lifetime, and it’s not always easy to have a normal kind of lifestyle.
An acquired brain injury never leaves you.
Life becomes all about coping with things, remembering things, trying to etch a way of life that can be all it can be with a brain injury.
It’s about confronting and pushing past changes which, with brain injury, can become mighty ominous and near unacceptable, though quite normal to most other people.
Living with an acquired brain injury also involves setting up new life patterns, adopting strategies and pathways for recovery and just damn living with it.
Welcome
Anyone who has an acquired brain injury is welcome at BIEN.
BIEN members host different levels and causes of acquired brain injury.
You might find you are speaking to a lucid and clear person in BIEN, but behind that is a brain injury which rules their life and almost every plan they have.
If you didn’t know it, you might think the person in front of you is completely normal, or can’t walk or talk because maybe they were born that way or had a physical accident that has made
them disabled.
That’s not the case in BIEN.
Brain injury takes many forms, and manifests in many different ways.
That’s what makes BIEN special.
If you’ve got an acquired brain injury of any kind, no matter how it reveals itself, you can be a member, and start enjoying things like fishing, going on trips, getting together for tea or coffee,
entering art competitions, all sorts of things right here in the West of Scotland!
The Brain Injury Experience Network meet the third Wednesday of every month at the Concord Centre, Dumbarton.
BIEN is affiliated with the West Dunbartonshire ABI Team, who have helped BIEN facilitate meetings and provide access to some great help, like transport for trips, etc.
If you want more details, contact: John 07999441376 or th***************@ho*****.com