National Centre for Excellence of Post-Crash Support

Brake's National Centre of Excellence for Post-Crash Support aims to support practitioners and their organisations to develop and integrate ethical approaches to their practice. This is underpinned by an appreciation of the needs of victims and their families, current knowledge and understanding and an awareness of the role and remit of practitioners involved in the criminal, medical and legal processes which follow.

There are four core strands to our work. These are:

1. Delivering trauma informed practice training focused on integrating ethical approaches to practice for practitioners working in response to a road traffic collision.
2. Providing consultancy and guidance in response to complexity, challenge and crisis.
3. Establishing research partnerships to contribute to generating knowledge which centres the voice and experiences of victims and their families and aims to create change.
4. Creating opportunities for restorative practice and mediation to address experiences of organisational harm and to promote repair.

The National Centre of Excellence aims to provide services to a range of practitioners, including front-line emergency responders, family liaison officers, investigating officers and critical incident commanders, educational settings, employers, health and social care, other non-statutory partners, insurance and legal professionals. We are committed to offering support to any and all practitioners who have a responsibility for providing information or care to victims and their families and to those researchers and academics who engage in research to further our knowledge and understanding of their needs.

Brake's National Centre of Excellence for Post-Crash Support offers a series of programmes and access to training and resources for practitioners, including a paid membership scheme for companies whose employees drive for work to guide their response in the event of a road traffic collision, the proceeds from which will be diverted back into the charity to fund our work.

Specific programmes include:

• Trauma-informed family liaison practice training. Working with Thrive London our clinical consultant has created an on-demand specialist module trauma informed family liaison practice which is relevant to all practitioners who have a role in engaging with bereaved families following a sudden death. Click here to access the training module.
• Commissioned training. Working with legal and insurance partners, we have developed specialist training for legal professionals, and insurance claim handlers to support them to integrate a trauma informed approach to their specific areas of practice. We welcome enquiries from other sectors who wish to commission specialist training workshops. Click here to find out more.
• Crisis consultancy and guidance. We recognise that many of our partners encounter complexity, challenge and crisis in their work with victims and families. Our centre of excellence is committed to making expert guidance accessible upon request through our responsive crisis consultancy service within 24 hours, including weekends and bank holidays. This is available free of charge to statutory and non-statutory partner agencies. Commissioned crisis consultancy and guidance can also be made available to businesses on a retained basis for an additional fee, please get in touch to discuss further. Click here to submit a request for crisis consultancy.
• Research collaboration. We partner with researchers and their organisations to support the involvement of victims and their families to participate in research projects which are dedicated to furthering knowledge and creating impact. We offer specialist research consultancy on request to assist research teams to integrate a trauma informed approach to engagement. Further information about our research strategy and how to apply for a research partnership is coming soon.
• Restorative practice and mediation. We will work with victims, their families and practitioners to address perceived organisational harm and create opportunities for restorative through a process of mediation.

The work of the National Centre of Excellence for Post-Crash Support is delivered by Brake and led by our clinical consultant Dr Nicola Lester.

Click on the down arrow below to find out more about Nicola.

We welcome further enquiries, feedback and comments. We aim to respond to these within three working days. Please complete the ‘find out more form’ below.

For requests to crisis consultancy and guidance, professionals should complete the ‘request for crisis consultancy’ form. Please ensure you read and understand the statement of commitment outlining the terms and scope of this service prior to submission. This form will also ask you to confirm the level of urgency of your request. To receive a response within two working days, please mark it as ‘routine’, for a response within 24 hours please mark it as ‘urgent’.

We have developed a number of resources which can be downloaded and accessed immediately. Click on the links below to download.

You can also access our trauma-informed family liaison practice on-demand training module. Click here to access the training module.

Our overcoming challenges in practice section allows us to share resources and guidance which have been developed in response to the complex and challenging cases and situations which we have encountered through the work of Brake's National Road Victim Service. We hope that by sharing these resources our efforts can benefit our partner organisations.