Charter for People Living with Stroke

As promised in an earlier post, I am including a link to the Charter for People Living with Stroke: you can view the Charter here .

For those living in Scotland who have survived a stroke, leaving hospital and re-entering the world can be a confusing experience. The Charter for People Living with Stroke aims to make clear what should be available in terms of support from the health and social care services. It will be widely distributed to Health Boards, local authorities, hospital stroke units and MSPs later this year.

I wish something like it had been available when I was discharged from hospital in 2004.

The Charter has been put together by members of the Heart Disease and Stroke Cross Party Group, which is a committee of the Scottish Parliament, chaired by the estimable Helen Eadie, Labour MSP for Cowdenbeath. Cross Party Groups provide a non-political forum for discussion of important issues related to the work of the Parliament. I was privileged to be a member of the group which drew up the Charter. The group included stroke survivors, representatives of stroke charities, stroke clinicians and politicians. As you can see by clicking on the link above, the Charter is expressed in an accessible format and this was done by a professional speech and language therapist. This should make it available to the many stroke survivors who are affected by aphasia and other language difficulties.

The Charter has been endorsed by all the major professional organisations and stroke charities in Scotland. It is founded on the latest stroke research. While it does not have the force of law, the Charter gives an indication of what should be available in terms of professional support to stroke survivors living in Scotland.

The Charter for People Living with Stroke is a great example of what can be achieved when people with different skills and professions collaborate to achieve a common goal – in this case, to help stroke survivors begin to make sense of the support they can receive when embarking on the long road to rehabilitation and recovery from stroke. It is not perfect, or finished, but importantly it now exists.

And of course I cannot resist providing you with an update on the progress of Archie, one week on. Click on the picture below to view him in full technicolour splendour: