Spotlight on Our Acquired Brain Injury Supports

Did you know that in addition to providing support to adults and children with developmental disabilities Skills Society also supports adults with acquired brain injury?

Our acquired brain injury program has been running for over 20 years and is one of only two programs in Edmonton to offer community based support to citizens with acquired brain injury. In collaboration with the referring Alberta Brain Injury Network, three employees of Skills Society support approximately 30 survivors of acquired brain injury. Programs include rehabilitation, accessing resources and services, relationship building, and establishing connections in the community. These flexible supports are available to people who are over the age of 18.

Our Skills Society community is diverse - with the individuals we serve having a range of disability experiences and accessing funding from a variety of provincial sources (e.g. Program for Persons with Developmental Disabilities, Family Supports for Children with Disabilities, and the Alberta Brain Injury Initiative). Amongst our diversity, we are united by our

Vision - a community where all individuals are valued citizens deserving respect, dignity, and rights. Here we shine a spotlight on our community’s diversity, sharing a story from Harley, a citizen we serve who has an acquired brain injury.

Harley acquired a brain injury through surgery to remove a brain tumor. This started a challenging time in his life - losing his wife to breast cancer, navigating being a single father to his three children while adjusting to his newly acquired brain injury, and facing the return of his brain tumor. Despite these immense barriers, Harley, together with his family and supports, persevered and has found joy and stability again. Thankfully his tumor has been removed with no additional side effects. Today, Harley has remarried, and regularly enjoys bicycling, fishing, camping, hunting, and socializing with his family. Harley is a member of the Leduc Brain Injury Rebuilding Club, passed the Government of Canada new Meteorological Regulations exam required to obtain a drone pilot’s license, and has recently returned to work as a journeyman auto tech.

In this report and at the Annual General Meeting everyone in the Skills Community will be invited to reflect on their own preferences and gifts and the type of change maker they most identify with. Here I share some of my own reflections on the type of change making I’m most drawn to and I look forward to hearing from others in our Skills Community where their preferences and strengths lie.

For those that know me, it’s probably not a surprise that I mostly lean towards the Dreaming Horizon of the future but with a strong tendency for bending systems so they innovate sooner. Alongside amazing colleagues - you all, and community - I’ve been trying to bend systems to be more humanized and equitable for most of my career. I could always see the value of dreaming, but I didn’t always see the value of this system bending quality to innovation until a few years ago when an Indigenous Elder helped me recognize it in change work. While stewarding some collective work in helping remove system barriers to employment for Indigenous youth in Treaty 7 area I was gifted a name from Blackfoot Elder Reg Crowshoe. The name he gifted was - Immmick. I was told by Elder Reg that the name means something along the lines of “To bend things towards a good way, and also relates to the bend in a bow before an arrow is shot”. If anything, the honor of the name sticks in my mind as a reminder to regularly think and act in ways where I can bend my mind and systems to be better and do better so that people have the chance for good lives. So, you’ll see me mostly wanting to lead from the Dreamer and Innovator horizons to try to bend things into better futures. However, I’ve also learned to really appreciate and respect the Actioners who are not afraid to jump in, question and fix the struggles of the now. We really do need all 3 for good future building!

I’m often torn as to whether to share some ideas on the future or just steward good ideas from our Skills community to emerge. But, I think once again a “both-and” approach is probably the right way forward. There is a paradox I’ve learned with being an Executive Director: people tend to want you to listen and steward key ideas from stakeholders and at the same time they want to hear your unique vision and ideas. It seems to be one of those things to balance and being transparent about the tension is how I lead. Rest assured there will be lots of ways to hear ideas over the coming months and we will do our best to steward them and have them inform strategic priorities, projects, collective learning and future building.

• What if including people with disabilities in everyday life, in our friend groups, in work, our organizations and community was just a given and part of how society acted?

• What if some of the new Artificial Intelligence advances could be tools of the future that help support good lives of people with disabilities? What if these tools could be ethically bent towards good and help support more autonomy, freedom, connection, and empowerment of people? What if these tools helped remove barriers to inclusion and helped people with disabilities be more valued for who they are and how they want to contribute in society?

• Our CMHC funded Future of Home Lab co-created some promising inclusive models of living that aim to support deeper belonging and community connection of people with disabilities. With our partner and 2023 Community Belonging Award winner Leston Holdings we are actually bringing one of the prototypes from the lab to life in 2024. 12 people supported with PDD funding will move into a new 325 unit apartment building on the west side of the city. The 12 folks with PDD funding will receive support from Skills Society and there will be a community connecting amenity called “The Community Concierge”. The concierge role will map gifts of everyone in the building and help people with and without disabilities to connect and build good relationships. This is exciting and I dream that what we learn together from this pilot, we will share, build toolkits and make it easier for ourselves and others to scale models like this for more people in the PDD system. If we can figure out how to properly scale this more inclusive model, we can help offer a viable alternative to institutional living and support more people to thrive.

• We figure out better access for more orgs to use MyCompass Planning? MyCompass is our case management social innovation that is the only case management software that enables people served to be at the helm - centering their voice alongside supports. There is amazing potential with this software to help redesign and humanize social service interactions, and make it easier for administrators and staff to adopt person-centered values and practices.

• We keep collaborating with our Government partner and colleagues in the Disability Sector to help ensure there is a sustainable, qualified, well compensated workforce in order to be able to keep providing dignified and quality support to those we serve. The government funded 2022 KPMG report3 highlights a robust strategy to accomplish this for the sector. See the Alberta Council of Disability Service Providers (ACDS) website for more info4

These are just a few ideas and in due course I’m really looking forward to hearing from you what your Dreamer, Innovator and Actioner ideas are as we build more inclusive futures together.

Big thanks and gratitude to you all. Thank you to the families and individuals we serve, staff, community allies and donors for your continued passion, advocacy, and creativity to make opportunities for citizens with disabilities the best possible.

Sincerely,

Ben Weinlick, Executive Director

3. See the full report here: https://acds.ca/files/Workforce/ BlueprintCDS_FINAL_Comprehensive_Workforce_Strategy.pdf

4. Visit the ACDS Webpage on Project Blueprint here: https://acds. ca/workforce/blueprint-cds.html