Acquired brain injury affects 135 million people worldwide, with causes such as traumatic brain injury (TBI), stroke and dementia. Distressingly, loss of communication occurs for 70% of TBI, 30% of stroke patients experience aphasia, and impaired communication occurs for 70-80% of people with dementia. Communication is fundamental to everyday functioning, and vital to engaging with healthcare services. So, this loss devastates all aspects of daily life, significantly impacting mental health, employment, participation, and family functioning. Over the past decade, new treatments have been developed which aim to improve the communication of people with brain injury with the goal of fostering community integration. These training communication partners, such as family members, friends and healthcare professionals to enable them to deal with difficult communication behaviours and facilitate positive communication interactions. This presentation will provide an overview of the evolution of communication partner training for acquired brain injury with reference to best practice guidelines, including the newly revised International Cognitive Rehabilitation Guidelines (INCOG 2.0), newly developed evidence-based treatment programs and the measures used to evaluate communication outcomes. The presentation will describe the Social Brain Toolkit, which comprises three stand-alone training programs. Interact-ABI-lity is a self-directed online program for anyone who needs to communicate with a person with acquired brain injury (including those with aphasia, dysarthria and cognitive communication disorders) and would like to learn communication strategies and build confidence. Social-ABI-lity is a program aimed at people with brain injury and their families, with the goal of improving the person’s confidence and proficiency in using social media, such as Instagram and Facebook. Finally, convers-ABI-lity is a 10-week online communication partner training program which has been developed to enable speech pathologists to work with the person with brain injury and their family in a custom designed online treatment platform. The aim of convers-ABI-lity is for the person with TBI and their family member or friend to have more enjoyable conversations. A detailed description of these programs will be provided, as well as an overview of evidence-based assessments used in our studies, an outline of the practical resources that are freely available online and a summary of the findings of our pilot studies. The focus of the presentation will be on providing those attending with practical assessment and treatment resources for use in their clinical practice to enable people with acquired brain injury have positive, meaningful communication outcomes.

Professor Leanne Togher is a full Professor at The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, and Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Senior Research Fellow. Professor Togher holds a PhD in the area of speech pathology, and is internationally recognised with more than 120 papers, 4 books and over 20 book chapters. She has attracted over AUD$30 million in external grant funding and was awarded the 2018 NHMRC Elizabeth Blackburn - Clinical Research Fellowship prize as the highest ranked female research fellow applicant in the field of Clinical Science and Medicine in the NHMRC Fellowships scheme.

Professor Togher’s communication treatments for people with brain injury and their families, carers, service providers and community agencies include TBI Express, TBI ConneCT and the Social Brain Toolkit. She is Director of speechBITE.

Professor Togher is Honorary Professor at City University, London, UK, and Visiting Professor, Education University of Hong Kong, International Board Member for the Journals Board of ASHA (USA), Chair of the Editorial Board for Brain Impairment, and Editorial board member of Brain Injury, Aphasiology and the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. She is a member of the Board of Governors of the IBIA, and a Director on the Board of Brain Injury Australia.