Headway Suffolk Brainy Dogs project with rehab hubs in Bury St Edmunds and Ipswich wins innovation award

A unique project that enlists help from man’s best friend has won an innovation award for supporting brain injury survivors.

Headway Suffolk’s Brainy Dogs, which trains rescue dogs to become companions for people with a brain injury or neurological condition, has won the Headway UK 2023 innovation award.

With rehab hubs in both Bury St Edmunds and Ipswich, the charity’s project has come a long way since it began in 2011 and the recent achievement has marked over a decade of work.

Helen Fairweather, CEO of Headway Suffolk, was inspired to start the project after she read Endal by Allen Parton, a Royal Navy veteran who sustained a head injury and was given a companion dog.

Now, she’s delighted to see how her idea has come and formed to help save lives.

She said: “A brain injury can be absolutely awful as you can lose everything - your friends, your family, your job, your home, your kids and more, so it's not surprising that people can get depressed.

“When a client first gets their dog it's absolutely amazing and dogs have actually saved their lives and prevented them from committing suicide by giving them a reason to live.

“They can want something to love and something to love them back so the dog becomes their friend, family and support and they start putting the dog first.

“Dog walking is a normal activity and our clients like to have a normal activity, so they really appreciate even things like that, it's phenomenal really.”

The dogs are trained by volunteers from different sectors: teenagers and adults affected by mental ill-health, veterans, as well as children unable to attend mainstream education, prisoners and probation.

Ms Fairweather, who lives in Kesgrave near Ipswich, is surprisingly petrified of dogs even though she set up the project involving man’s best friend.

After being bitten and dragged into the sea when she was child, the charity CEO has had a phobia of them ever since, but that hasn’t stopped her from achieving her goal to help brain injury survivors and is now over the moon it's been recognised.

“There were many other Headway groups that had been nominated for the award so I’d convinced myself that we were absolutely not going to win,” she said.

“When they said we won it just went over my head and I didnt even realise what they said. I was absolutely shocked.

“They called my name out to get the award on stage and it still didn't feel real, but it's such an honour and for us to be singled out was brilliant.

“For me personally, to read a book and then turn that into a project that can really help people is honestly a really nice feeling.”

Moving forwards, Ms Fairweather wants to make sure Brainy Dogs continues to grow by talking to sponsors and corporates as the lottery funding they were using has now finished.

She also hopes to make some changes such as using more volunteers than paid staff and offering Brainy Dogs as a placement to occupational therapy students or speech and language students, as part of their degree course to see how dogs help with rehabilitation and how they can be used to help people.

“The dogs can be used for hand therapy by grooming the dog or even speech language therapy by clients talking to the dogs and giving them commands, which can really help with their speech,” said Ms Fairweather.

“Our clients might lack motivation. If we ask if they want to go for a walk they say no, but if we say do you want to go on a walk with a dog, they’ll do it.

“So lots of people have benefited from having the companion of a dog but have also used the dog as a rehabilitation tool which is amazing.”