It’s never nice to leave early. It’s especially hard to leave early when you have spent 48 truly unforgettable hours seeing some of the best offered by mankind. I arrived at the Maggie Sargent & Associates Community Case Management Services summer surfing retreat on Monday evening. Their website gives a good indication of the organisation’s mission: “The Maggie Sargent & Associates CCMS is a medico-legal organisation that was founded to.. provide expert evidence on the additional costs of caring for clients with brain injury and physical handicaps for both personal injury and medical negligence claims”. For the purposes of full disclosure, Maggie & her husband John’s son Will is a friend of mine. It is also Will that has for some time insisted on how relevant to me the work is that his parents’ charity carries out. Indeed, for the purposes of this early week séjour we were not friends but I a prospective client visiting MS&A CCMS. I myself suffered a TBI in 2017. As expected, he was not wrong. I was bowled over by what I lived this week (I say lived because it feels more just to group myself with fellow brain injury sufferers; even if the weekend has reminded me of the total fortune of my bodily and neurological state six years on from my own head injury). To be honest, the headscratcher this week is why I haven’t come to see MS&A’s work sooner. On Monday night, Will and I had a jolly pub supper with Adam and Hamza. Hamza is a 28-year-old who had had a head injury that, as with all of us there, had slowed down his neurological function. In Hamza’s eyes though, you could see the cheeky chappy that lay beneath; the mischief that had existed pre-head injury. Then on Tuesday a swim started the day off in the exactly the right manner — the exercise endorphins combining with the minor shock to the nervous system of the cold water. The early dose of cold water really does put one in a good headspace for the day ahead. Then to a different beach it was for a spot of accessible body boarding. The ingenuity of the MS&A caseworkers combined with the determination of the brain injury survivors was a privilege to behold. Again, I use the word ‘survivors’ because that is what these people (we) are — people refusing to be defined by their brain injuries. Then that evening we all joined forces for a 30-person pub supper — a group supper always the way to congregate and celebrate. It doesn’t take much for me to feel touched — for the emotion bone in my body to be tweaked — but writing this as I sit aboard the train back to London, I have been enchanted by my visit to Devon. While I wish I could have stayed longer, I sadly could not. I have 0 doubt about my feelings for this most wonderful of organisations though — long may Maggie Sargent & Associates Community Case Management Services continue doing its wonderful work!

We are very pleased to have sponsored Asher on his first ski trip with Community Case Management Services Limited. He had so much fun and made lots of new friends.

Maggie Sargent & Associates were proud to be associated with this safari and sponsored a client to go. This is within our ethos of trying to support those who do not have a claim for any financial assistance so that they too can join in with all the activities.

Maggie Sargent & Associates are delighted to announce that they will be sponsoring Straw & Order to run a wheelchair-adapted upholstery workshop in Brighton. Looking forward to having the Silverlining and other organisations for activities and fun such as art group meetings and camping for people with reduced mobility as well as offering an adapted workshop for people wishing to promote their vocational skills!

The Silverlining offers unique hope by helping clients rebuild their lives after brain injury by helping others. The charity helps to encourage a social support network for the injured, their family members, and the wider community. Regular social activities are held to develop and maintain friendships for much-needed social support, including dinners, bowling, rock-climbing, skiing, and snooker.

Shipston Home Nursing provides palliative care, through its team of professional nurses, for the time required by each individual patient who is terminally ill and wishes to remain in his or her own home. Palliative care is the active total care of patients whose illness no longer responds to curative treatment and who wish to have the best quality of life for themselves and their families.

Ski 2 Freedom Foundation promotes the interests of people affected by any physical, cognitive, sensory, genetic, degenerative conditions, special needs and life-challenging circumstances. It aims to empower and improve the condition of their lives and social welfare. Ski 2 Freedom provides information and facilities, including rehabilitation, recreation, or other leisure-time occupation – in particular, winter sport and year round mountain-based activities.

Maggie Sargent & Associates are sponsoring British Eventer, Laura Collett. She is in her 8th year as a professional and currently holds seven medals – one Gold, one Silver and one Bronze – from European Championships. She had a serious fall and injury in 2013 in which she fractured her shoulder, punctured a lung, lascerated her liver, broke two ribs and lost permanently the sight in her left eye. In spite of this, she has continued to compete at the highest level.