CLiC

Community Living Connection

Community Living Connection (CLiC) is a telehealth program that combines assistive technology and the Internet to assist in providing vital post-acute brain injury supports to people living with brain injury. Primarily, the program seeks to create a learning community among brain injury survivors living in rural settings.

Groups of brain injury survivors and facilitators connect via an Internet-based collaborative platform typically used for education. This web conferencing application allows all participants and facilitator to communicate freely with each other using audio, video, and instant messaging features. The facilitator ensures participants are following a semi-structured agenda developed by the facilitator based on the needs of the group, individual client goals, and program goals. A typical session's course might include the following sequence of activities, with emphasis on cognitive abilities or social skills building indicated in parentheses:

• Work of the day, agenda review (organization)
• Discussion of upcoming group outing (planning)
• Newsletter (organization, planning)
• Greeting (social)
• Lateral thinking (problem solving, social)
• Recall of previous puzzler (memory development)
• Common group activity discussions such as books read, service project, cooking, etc. (organization, planning, social, perseverance)
• Topic associated with brain injury (social)
• Vocabulary with synonyms and antonyms (cognitive flexibility)
• End of session (vocabulary word recall)

Three-hour sessions are conducted twice per week for a 10-week period known as a "round". Two weeks lapse between the end of one round and the beginning of the next. The program consists of 30 participant openings per round, with groups of 10 participants assigned to a specially trained facilitator. Participants are selected based on the following criteria:

• At least 18 years of age
• Documented evidence of an acquired brain injury
• At least one year post-injury
• Possesses adequate language, vision, and motor skills for using a computer as determined by results of a mini-test of computer skills
• Has access to broadband Internet connection

CLICK HERE to read what the Roanoke Times reported on this program.