It is estimated that greater than 1 million adults within the UK are at present living with all the long-term consequences of brain injuries (Headway, 2014b). Prices of ABI have increased considerably in current years, with estimated increases more than ten years ranging from 33 per cent (Headway, 2014b) to 95 per cent (HSCIC, 2012). This enhance is because of a range of aspects which includes improved emergency response following injury (Powell, 2004); a lot more cyclists interacting with heavier targeted traffic flow; enhanced participation in unsafe sports; and larger numbers of extremely old individuals in the population. Based on Nice (2014), by far the most common causes of ABI within the UK are falls (22 ?43 per cent), assaults (30 ?50 per cent) and road traffic accidents (circa 25 per cent), even though the latter category accounts for a disproportionate number of much more severe brain injuries; other causes of ABI incorporate sports injuries and domestic violence. Brain injury is much more prevalent amongst males than ladies and shows peaks at ages fifteen to thirty and over eighty (Good, 2014). International data show similar patterns. As an example, within the USA, the Centre for Disease Control estimates that ABI affects 1.7 million Americans every single year; kids aged from birth to 4, older teenagers and adults aged over sixty-five have the highest prices of ABI, with men extra susceptible than women across all age ranges (CDC, undated, Traumatic Brain Injury within the United states of america: Fact Sheet, accessible 
on the web at www.cdc.gov/ traumaticbraininjury/get_the_facts.html, accessed December 2014). There’s also rising awareness and concern in the USA about ABI amongst military personnel (see, e.g. Okie, 2005), with ABI prices reported to exceed onefifth of combatants (Okie, 2005; Terrio et al., 2009). While this short article will focus on current UK policy and practice, the concerns which it highlights are relevant to quite a few national contexts.Acquired Brain Injury, Social Operate and PersonalisationIf the causes of ABI are wide-ranging and unevenly distributed across age and gender, the XAV-939 supplement impacts of ABI are similarly diverse. Some people make a great recovery from their brain injury, whilst other individuals are left with important ongoing issues. In addition, as Headway (2014b) cautions, the `initial diagnosis of severity of injury is not a trusted indicator of long-term problems’. The prospective impacts of ABI are nicely described each in (non-social perform) academic literature (e.g. Fleminger and Ponsford, 2005) and in individual accounts (e.g. Crimmins, 2001; Perry, 1986). Even so, offered the limited interest to ABI in social operate literature, it’s worth 10508619.2011.638589 listing some of the frequent after-effects: physical issues, cognitive issues, impairment of executive functioning, modifications to a person’s behaviour and alterations to emotional regulation and `personality’. For many people with ABI, there might be no physical indicators of impairment, but some could expertise a array of physical issues which includes `loss of co-ordination, muscle rigidity, paralysis, epilepsy, difficulty in speaking, loss of sight, smell or taste, fatigue, and sexual problems’ (Headway, 2014b), with fatigue and headaches getting specifically frequent soon after cognitive activity. ABI could also cause cognitive issues such as problems with journal.pone.0169185 memory and decreased speed of info processing by the brain. These physical and cognitive elements of ABI, whilst challenging for the person concerned, are fairly effortless for social workers and other people to conceptuali.