Why a companion is required rather than suggested
Therapy occupies a few hours of the day. Whoever is there carries the rest — and delivers the programme for the eleven months the patient is not with us.
For most neurological programmes we ask for someone to come, and it is not a comfort measure.
What the rest of the day decides
Therapy occupies a few hours. The rest — how a transfer is done, how far someone is allowed to struggle before help arrives, whether the exercises happen at all — is carried by whoever is there. Done one way it reinforces what the therapists are training; done another it quietly undoes it.
That is why the companion is treated as part of the programme rather than as a visitor.
The eleven months
The programme ends. The companion is the person who will be delivering it for the rest of the year. Most of what is taught during the stay is aimed at that period rather than at this one.
Seen that way, the weeks at the centre are a training course with a patient attached, and the companion is one of the students.
When a companion cannot come
Say so when the plan is being written rather than on arrival. For some patients and some programmes an alternative support arrangement is possible; for others the programme is genuinely not appropriate without one.
That conversation is much cheaper before the flights are booked.
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