By Greg Goldberg

After I sustained a traumatic head injury, I wanted to do something important to give back to other head injury survivors. Throughout the years, The Cridge Centre for the Family Brain Injury Services has given back to several brain injury survivors and communities by paying it forward with creating The Bluesheet Clubhouse, a support group for head injury survivors in Victoria, BC.

With their help, The Bluesheet Clubhouse is a support group we started eight years ago to provide education, social and physical needs to head injury survivors at Mary Cridge Manor. This support group does a wide variety of activities on a weekly basis from physical outings, social events, book clubs and puzzle creations. There is still much more that can and will be done, but here is what we have been up to recently.

As brain injury and stroke survivors we are always busy creating, developing and working with our projects to better others and ourselves.

Our latest project produced by The Bluesheet Synapse Gang is a new podcast called ‘Time to Talk Traumatic Brain Injury.’ focusing on living a productive and quality life after sustaining a head injury or stroke. The objective of this podcast is to provide other survivors with the opportunity to listen and learn from individuals who are travelling or have travelled the road of recovery post injury.

The brain injury survivors producing this podcast are having fun, socializing, improving their language, technical, communication and cognitive skills and giving back to the community. These survivors are on the air, while on their own flight path to recovery. Our motto for the Bluesheet Clubhouse is “Working with and Giving back to others”.

Some of our recent projects that were of great success included one this summer called ‘The Bump Cap Campaign’ Here we donated to golfers and maintenance staff at several golf courses Victoria (Mount Doug, Henderson, Prospect Lake, Cedar Hill and Uplands) 5 Bump Caps each to use for the safety of staff and guests to try. This bump cap uses a lightweight, protective shell that makes the stylish cap comfortable to use but also hard enough to protect their head is right on par with local golfers and maintenance crew safety needs. Bump caps for our campaign were donated by Acklands Grainger Safety Supplies right here in Victoria.

Once a month the members of the Bluesheet Clubhouse, are still producing challenging and fun jumble puzzles that the entire community of Victoria enjoys. These word jumbles are published in our local Mind X Magazine. It is available on newsstands across the city. A variety of our self-created word jumbles are used for every issue.

For us, making these word jumbles are a great way to improve our cognitive functioning after a brain injury and also help develop new and fun relationships with other Mary Cridge Manor residents.

Speaking of Jumbles, once a week, our Bluesheet team visits The English Learning Centre on The University of Victoria Campus to facilitate ‘Giant Word Winder’. This is a huge board game given to us by David L Hoyt (the most published puzzle make in North America) after he was informed and saw many of the jumbles that our head injury survivors were producing, publishing and using for their language and cognitive development.

International students from around the world are now enjoying learning the English language using this interactive game with other English language learners and our club’s head injury survivors. Our members of the Blue Sheet Club facilitate this game with a vast amount of players from around the world. Everyone is enjoying themselves socializing and learning all about new cultures from others happy to share.

As well as all of these activities, there is always fun and learning to have at our weekly Clubhouse gathering. Socializing while sharing snacks and stories over the hour always fills the room with laughter and smiles.

We are happy to take advantage of events happening around our community. This year’s clubhouse is filled with sports fans and we continue to go to many sports events across the city. The Victoria Royals, UVIC Basketball teams and The Victoria Shamrocks have given us complimentary tickets for the gang to go and check out lots of the live action. For the survivors to have the opportunity to go and see these games live is a real treat.

The Clubhouse makes its own fun as well. Monday Movie Nights, Karaoke contests, photography outings, theatre visits, crab fishing trips and gatherings just to be together made for a special place for survivors to participate, socialize, learn, smile and have fun living a productive and healthy life once again.

To learn more about The Cridge Brain Injury Program click here.

By Angela Brunwald, The Cridge Childcare Services

Do you know the best way to spend summer? The Cridge Childcare children have been participating in the Sooke to Sidney Rock Hunt (SS Rock Hunt for short) all summer using The SS Rock Hunt Facebook page. Rock Hunt means finding and painting rocks with acrylic paint. After rocks are painted and dry, we take them with us when we go on field trips. Our children hide the rocks in the community for everyone else to find. One 5-year-old told me that “when people find our rocks it makes them very happy!”

We love making people around us happy. Let me share with you some of the stories:

In July, we hid 6 rocks around the grounds at Fort Rodd Hill.  The same day, we asked our followers of Facebook to find them. We received: “My granddaughter was at Fort Rodd Hill the other day and found her very first rock at the lighthouse!!  She was thrilled to bits!!  She brought it home and wants to keep it – I hope the artist doesn’t mind?”

At Island View Beach Hi-5’s hid 6 rocks along the beach. They watched as one adult and three children found a few of our hidden rocks. Our children were excited watching them! “I guess we just made their day”, one of Hi-5’s said.

In August, we hid a few rocks at Beckwith Water Park. Later, the same evening on the SS Rock Hunt website I found a photo of a little boy holding one of our rocks. The note said that he found the rock (all by himself!) at Beckwith. His mom shared that the little guy’s name is James and he’s almost 3. He’s actually been carrying it around the house all morning so the joy continues.

Hi-5’s have found a few rocks themselves at different locations. They were VERY VERY excited when they discovered rocks hidden all around The Cridge Childcare building! A BIG thanks to whoever hid the rocks for Hi-5’s to find!

What a great way to get the children looking & hunting for exciting things in our community… Do you want to join us in Rock Hunting? Share this story and go for a hunt! We would love to see and hear about your rock hunt adventures!
Happy Painting & Hunting!

Angela 🙂

By Marlene Goley, Manager of The Cridge Transition House and Outreach Services

Ally was 19; she was about to graduate and really wanted to go on to Camosun College.

Ally’s son, Jamie, was a busy, happy 2 ½ year. He had been going to school with his mom and attending the on-site daycare while she had persevered to get her Dogwood Diploma.

Staff in the daycare knew that Ally had no family around her and that her only support was Jamie’s father. They also knew that his support was sporadic and unreliable.  They suspected he was abusive to Ally. They wanted to see her succeed, so encouraged her to call Nicole, The Cridge Young Parent Outreach Worker. They knew that Nicole could pick up where they left off in helping Ally to launch a hopeful future for her and Jamie.

Nicole met Ally at a Tim Horton’s – a frequent meeting place for Nicole and young moms in her program. When Nicole asked Ally if she was safe at home, Ally burst into tears and said she was afraid of Jamie’s father. He was using drugs, spending all of their money, and last night he scared her when he punched a big hole in the wall right beside her head. Nicole talked to Ally about her options, and they started making plans.

For the following year, Ally and Nicole met every week. At first, it was about getting Ally safe.  Then over the next months, Ally relied on Nicole to be her sounding board and her anchor. Ally relied on Nicole’s help to register for Camosun to take the business course she wanted.  Nicole helped her navigate applying for the Single Parent Initiative, daycare subsidy, and finding daycare. She took Ally to a food bank, sourced clothes for both Ally and Jamie, gave her bus tickets when she was short.  And she listened. Ally needed someone to bounce ideas off of, to celebrate her successes, and to prop her up when she was discouraged.

Ally is looking forward to finishing her business diploma and getting a good job.  Nicole is looking forward to staying connected to Ally and Jamie for as long as they need an anchor to stay the course to a bright future.

To learn more about The Cridge Young Parent Outreach Program, click here.

It takes a village to raise a child: a team made up of parents, grandparents, extended family, and community members. But many young families are alone and isolated, with no village to support them in parenting.

Being a parent – especially a low-income single parent – is an immense amount of work: sleepless nights, early morning commutes, trips to food banks and always the challenge of making ends meet. Add to that a sense of guilt or maybe even shame – the feeling of not being a good enough parent for your child.  Don’t mention the inability to find a well-paid job because many employers can’t or don’t want to accommodate changing hours and sick days. Or the inability to find a job with a living wage because of your unfinished education. All of these challenges lead to stressed out and vulnerable parents, struggling to get by every month.

This story is not unusual or rare. In fact, 19% of all children live with a single parent in Canada.

The Cridge Young Parent Outreach program was designed to help young mothers-to-be, single parents, and young families to overcome the challenges of parenting, develop and strengthen bonds between parents and children and help with everyday problems. The Young Parent Outreach program is the “village” and extended family that our young families need.

When you donate to The Cridge Young Parent Outreach Program, you help a vulnerable family find support in their everyday battles with practical and portable help when and where they need it most. With your ongoing support, we will help to grow a new generation of researchers, engineers, doctors or simply good people who care about the world around them.

To learn more about The Cridge Young Parent Outreach Program, click here.

By Marlene Goley, Manager of The Cridge Transition House and Outreach Services

Imagine being 12 years old and fleeing to a transition house with your mom.  You are relieved to be away from your dad’s scary, angry outbursts. But now you are in a strange house, sharing a room with your mom, and parachuting into a new school – who knows for how long.  Everything in your world is upside down.

There is a bright spot, though.  Your new school is great, and the kids and teachers are lovely.  And – best of all, the end-of-year camping trip is coming up. Even though you’ve only been in the class for a couple of weeks, you’re invited to go along. Everyone in your class is talking about how fun it’s going to be.

What you don’t know, and don’t need to know is that because you haven’t been a part of the fundraising all year, your mom needs to pay the whole cost of the trip.  You don’t need to know that your mom has no way to come up with this kind of money, has asked CTHW for help, and thanks to the generous donors that make a small contingency fund possible, a cheque was made out and delivered to your school.  All you need to know is that you are going camping with your class, and you can join in the excitement of having some “kid fun.”

This is a small thing in your 12-year-old world filled with adult worries.  But what you’ll learn is that it’s the little things that will help you through.

To learn more about The Cridge Transition House for Women.