From the Victoria Times Colonist

Geoff Sing and Janelle Breese Biagioni
Special to Times Colonist

Basics of life are not available to brain injury survivors
Sunday, October 28, 2007
A significant number of people living on our community’s streets and in shelters are struggling to live with the results of a brain injury. They’re destitute and homeless. Safe housing, nutritious food and healthy relationships — the basics in life that we all deserve — are not available to them.

At the Cridge Centre for the Family, we want to help change that.

An acquired brain injury can be caused in many ways — a blow to the head, tumour, aneurysm, stroke, concussion or drug overdose. The debilitating effects, including personality changes, memory loss and the inability to return to work, can last a lifetime.

In 2002, the government report on Guidelines for Planning Brain Injury Services and Supports in B.C. estimated that between 7,800 and 14,000 British Columbians sustain a brain injury every year, joining thousands of others already struggling to cope with the effects.

Moreover, the mayor’s task force on homelessness reported last week that an estimated 1,500 people in the capital region are living in unstable housing or homeless. It is likely that a significant number of these individuals are living with a brain injury.

Society as a whole pays a significant price for brain injuries. In the Canadian Institute for Health Information’s report on The Burden of Neurological Diseases, Disorders and Injuries in Canada, it reports that the total direct cost associated with head injury in 2000-01 was estimated at more than $151 million.

There are other factors to consider when calculating the cost to our society.

John Simpson, founder of the Fraser Valley Brain Injury Association and a retired case manager, volunteers with people who have sustained a brain injury, including those in prisons. “On the conservative side, it’s estimated that 80 per cent of B.C. prisoners have sustained at least one brain injury in their lifetime,” he says. “And 60 per cent plus of those 80 per cent experienced their first period of unconsciousness as a child.”

In addition, there is the huge human cost in terms of the burden placed on families, the stressed and often fractured marriages and the emotional struggles of the survivors. Divorce rates are estimated to be as high as 98 per cent following a brain injury.

Although the picture looks bleak, there is a way to turn this around. Government and interested or affected private partners need to invest money in prevention and education programs and to ensure that each person surviving a brain injury receives the services and supports needed to bring them quality of life.

Survivors of brain injury need access to employment training programs such as those offered through the Cridge Centre for the Family. The centre’s new Crews at Work helps survivors find meaningful employment. The program, working with Camosun College and businesses such as Rogers’ Chocolates, Thrifty Foods and Carmanah Technologies, has been very successful in helping survivors of brain injury return to work. The companies gain valuable employees and the survivors are given the opportunity to become contributing members in their community.

The single most important strategy to get survivors of brain injury off the street is to provide safe and supportive housing. That helps them enormously and saves government money. The Times Colonist reports that the emergency shelter, health-care and other costs involved in supporting a homeless person are three times greater than it would be to provide subsidized housing.

The Cridge believes that for the government to pay $25 per night for supportive housing or $38 per day to place a survivor in a self-contained apartment with some support is a significant saving over the estimated $60 to $85 per night for an emergency short-term bed.

Victoria should implement a program like the successful supportive housing model used by Cheshire Homes Society in the lower mainland. Cheshire offers numerous semi-independent and satellite apartments designed to meet the physical, social, psychological, spiritual and emotional needs of survivors of brain injury. The society’s programs address quality of life issues for survivors and ensures they have the necessary supports to live as independently and safely as possible.

While the solution is not easy, nor without a cost, it is attainable.

Most important, it will move marginalized survivors of brain injury off the street and help them to become contributing, valued members of our community.

Geoff Sing is manager of community and residential services and Janelle Breese Biagioni is a brain injury network mentor with the Cridge Centre for the Family.

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2007