The following is the text from the cover letter that was mailed with the original report.
March 31, 2006
John Connelly
Executive Director
The Ohio Rehabilitation Services Commission
400 East Campus View Boulevard
Columbus, Ohio 43235
Dear John:
I am very pleased to submit the attached report on The State of Ohio's Needs and Resource Assessment of Individuals with Brain Injuries and Their Families. The report puts the words and thoughts of those impacted by brain injury into formal data and findings. The report also proposes recommendations based on the findings.
This report gives Ohio's policymakers personal and statistical information they should have, as more than 227,000 Ohioans have a brain injury. The report also gives policymakers a legitimate research tool upon which to base their political and practical support for a system that serves this group of people, so ignored, yet so rich in potential.
Through the generous funding of the Rehabilitation Services Commission's Brain Injury Advisory Committee, the Ohio Department of Health, the Ohio Bureau or Workers' Compensation, the Ohio Department of Mental Health and the Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services, Ohio Legal Rights Service (OLRS) was able to hear directly from individuals with brain injury and their families. This report offers a compelling look at their lives - truly grassroots information gathering that hits right in the heart of reality.
But this report is only the beginning - it is a planning tool. It identifies issues and recommends how to address them. To improve the lives of Ohioans with brain injury, Ohio has to use the planning tool and make changes.
Sincerely,
Carolyn S. Knight
Executive Director
Cc: Julie Fasick-Valley, Chair, Brain injury Advisory Committee, BWC
Suzanne Minnich, Executive Director, Brain Injury Association of Ohio
Sheri Lowe, Deputy Director of Consumer Affairs, RSC
Nancy Harry, Brain Injury Program Director, RSC