Helen Buri

Helen is Clinical Director of Novo Therapy & Care Limited, and provides hands-on Case Management for clients across a wide age spectrum.  Her experience includes brain injuries, spinal and spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy, visual impairment, amputations and mental health conditions.  Some of her clients have also sustained internal injuries including kidney, bowel and bladder complications.  Helen can handle all aspects of care, from recruitment and supervision to co-ordinating other professionals, adaptations and the supply of equipment.

Helen also has a regular Occupational Therapy caseload.  She has considerable experience of working with people who have primarily a visual injury but also other issues including brain injury and mental health.  Helen’s dual training as a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist gives her a unique understanding of the relationship between physical and psychological trauma/symptoms and a range of tools she can use to provide effective, holistic rehabilitation.

Helen is trained in manual handling training for carers and she also has specific training as a Functional Capacity Evaluator, assessing clients’ abilities to return to work after injury. This includes a number of clients with hand injuries as well.

As an independent Occupational Therapist and Case Manager, she has been in private practice since 2005.  Helen assesses, treats and supports clients with complex needs and disabilities over a wide age range from infants to older adults, co-ordinating multidisciplinary professionals and carers.  Her experience includes working with people with multifactorial and complex injuries, brain injuries, cerebral palsy, psychological conditions, spinal injuries, general orthopaedic/traumatic injuries, amputations and visual impairment.

In 2015 Helen set up Novo Therapy & Care Limited, providing case management and occupational therapy services in Scotland.  Her current caseload includes clients both going through the litigation process and those whose claims for damages have settled.  She is responsible for planning, setting up and resourcing rehabilitation and care packages and has experience of both directly recruiting/managing staff, and working closely with a complex care agency who recruit specifically to meet the needs of her clients.  Helen is able to design and provide individually tailored occupational therapy programmes for adults for brain injury, working with a multidisciplinary team, and is trained to provide advice to clients and architects on issues to do with housing design and adaptation.  She has specific training as a Functional Capacity Evaluator, assessing clients’ abilities to return to work after injury, and in manual handling training for carers.  Long-term intervention with one client over a 9 year period has enabled Helen to develop specific skills in managing the dynamics of a large team of carers over time, including a complete restructure due to the changing needs of the client.

Helen regularly undertakes occupational therapy assessments to assist tribunal hearings in the appeal of statutory disability benefits.  With the changeover from DLA to PIP there has been a significant increase in the number of appeals.  For many cases the critical issue has been mental health and her role is to assess the impact of mental health conditions on everyday living activities.  Helen completed her 2-year post-graduate diploma in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy at the university of the West of Scotland in July 2020 and is an accredited Psychotherapist with the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies.  In 2022, Helen completed her training in Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and now uses these therapies with her clients.

In all her areas of work, Helen uses a range of standardised tools and assessment protocols to subjectively and objectively measure clinical outcomes.  Helen has previously worked in the NHS for 9 years after qualifying in 1990, gaining general experience including hand injuries, neurological conditions, back/spinal injuries, amputation and visual impairment before developing specialist skills in assessment and rehabilitation of people with orthopaedic injuries.  Subsequently Helen took up a post as a clinical research therapist within a multidisciplinary team during which time she gained a Master of Science degree with distinction and spent three years as a senior lecturer in the School of Health and Social Care at Sheffield Hallam University.

She regularly reviews articles for publication in the British Journal of Occupational Therapy and has been published in international peer-reviewed journals.  As an independent practitioner, Helen is highly organised and able to work under pressure.  She is a confident communicator, having presented at conferences and lectured to students.