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Tag: recovery

  • Crime, Community Reintegration, Trauma & Neuroscience

    Person walking on a suspension bridge toward a forest with Better Life Integration and Support superimposed on it.

    As the Better Life Team enters fall, the volume of Offenders’ requests for faith community reintegration support remains very similar to when Better Life Integration & Support held the Correctional Service Canada (CSC) Faith Community Reintegration (FCRP) contract.

    What that means is that Better Life continues to hold a trusted place with both Offenders seeking trusted community reintegration support, and just as significantly, with the large network of community reintegration partners, including CSC parole offices and interventions staff within the Correctional Institutions.

    However, this only tells part of the story—one reinforced for me weekly, as Better Life’s acting executive director—while the (invaluable) rest of the story is that the larger Better Life Team is made up of individuals whose faith is so significant and tangible to them that they continue to sacrificially invest their lives in supporting Offenders.

    Behind this position of trust we’ve earned in faith community reintegration support circles are the individuals who spend hours each week, both within the Correctional Institutions and out in the community, listening, praying, and supporting through building clear faith community bridges activated as soon as a Offender enters parole. This work continues to change the trajectory of dozens of parolee’s lives. Not only is there the radical reduction in recidivism through community reintegration, but parolees—sometimes for the first time in their lives—become productive and contributing members to their communities.

    This spring, upon the passing of one of our senior members, I was reminded of our volunteers’ invaluable contributions. Bob spent his career with Child and Family services, both as a social worker and in management. Upon retirement, he continued on from his career supporting the less fortunate to investing in men deemed by many as not having a hope of recovery or contribution. 

    Over my years with Better Life, I’ve had many conversations with Bob as he passionately—and sometimes, emotionally—spoke of the deep needs of “his” men and the support that they required to live new and better lives. I am constantly inspired at how our Better Life team members exemplify their faith in Jesus by sacrificially investing in ‘the least of these.’

    The focus of Better Life, in the absence of an active CSC FCRP contract, continues to be investing in the men and women of the CSC Pacific Region as they approach parole and helping provide the best support possible through their local community of faith for a healthy parole experience.

    In seeking to ensure a long and healthy future for Better Life Integration & Support, we have been deeply invested in writing applications and proposals to various foundations for supportive grants to help resource our work (one grant application actually took over 200 hours!), though we have not yet found a replacement funding source.

    We also continue to be involved with the Chaplaincy Wellness Program (CwP). This program addresses the impact of trauma and is currently offered quarterly at Mission Correctional Institution. We are conducting meetings with Kent Correctional Institution (maximum security) to begin offering the program there. I’ve been honoured to be invited by Better Life board member and psychotherapist Dr. Grace Lian-Bodenbach to provide a session during our next program cycle on The Brain and Trauma, exploring how each of us can understand and answer the questions: why do I think what I think, feel what I feel, and do what I do? Ultimately, who is the boss of me?

    Neurology gives us invaluable insights into how we are impacted by trauma, including “neuroplasticity” and the potential for each of us to create “new pathways” that allow us to think new thoughts, feel new feelings, and engage in different actions than the ones that we pursued in the past. A recording of my previous CwP Brain and Trauma session is on the Better Life website, if you’d like to listen to it, and I will be posting a revised session in the near future.

    Thank you for your support of Better Life. We ask for your prayers as continue to pursue long term funding to ensure the invaluable ministry of Better Life reaches far into the future.

    Gratefully, 

    Adam Wiggins

    Executive Director

    Better Life Integration & Support

  • The Brain, Trauma & Limiting Beliefs

    This presentation was first delivered at a Correctional Service Canada Offender Wellness Program.

    The content reflects Better Life Integration & Support’s discovery that addressing trauma (PTSD, large “T” Trauma) is an important element for Offenders to enter into a healthy community reintegration pathway and experience a new and better life.

    One of the constant responses I get, when I say I work in Federal Offender Community Reintegration, is the belief that offenders can not be rehabilitated.

    In complete alignment with the evidence-based research that continues to emerge, my personal experience with Better Life Integration & Support has been that this is a destructive myth. A myth inflamed by media headlines that amplify the horrors of recidivism (reoffending) and embed this belief in a single possible (inevitably negative!) outcome across Canadian society.

    In many cases, the issue isn’t that offenders can’t be rehabilitated. Rather, it’s that there has not been an intentional reintegration pathway back into the community for them.

    In other words, offenders often serve their time and are released into the community (usually into a halfway house and under the supervision of a parole officer), but without a community to welcome them, engage them in pro-social activity, and to continue to address the challenges that often led to their offence in the first place.

    This is where Better Life has had the opportunity to make a real difference in outcomes—connecting offenders to the life-changing difference church communities can have in supporting these women and men to experience a new and better life. Throughout the Pacific Region (BC and the Yukon), church communities that welcome and support parolees with intentional, faith based, reintegration practices are radically impacting the lives of parolees.

    While the reasons for criminal activity and recidivism are many, we recognize the widespread and deep impact of trauma on the human brain, and Better Life is stepping up our support in this area through a wellness program led by Chaplain Daniel Friesen and Psychotherapist Dr. Grace Lian. I also recorded this video and have presented at some of the most recent workshops.

    While research in this specific area continues to emerge, many women and men in Correctional Institutions suffered from significant trauma and PTSD (post-traumatic syndrome disorder). Again, while there are many reasons underlying why an individual commits a crime, the ‘early story’ of an offender is often horrific, including for some who were raised in communities of faith.

    In brief, what Better Life is discovering is that, as we address an individual’s trauma through trauma-informed psychotherapy—specifically, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)—we begin to give men and women an opportunity to live life free from being highjacked by the extreme and often overwhelming events and emotions of the past.

    This is just one “tool” among many needed for healing and successful reintegration, and we’re excited about adding it as an additional support for offenders in their journey. (With reference to our previously referenced reintegration pathway model, we currently offer this inside institutions prior to parole at the “on-ramp” stage.)

    Of course, trauma, to various degrees, is something that impacts all of us. If you’d like to understand the impact of trauma on the brain, why we think what we think, feel what we feel, and do what we do, please watch this video presentation of the material that we recently presented to the men at Mission Medium Correctional Institution.

    As always, we’re deeply grateful for your support. It is your financial and prayerful investment in Better Life that allows us to continue to have a life-changing and eternity-altering impact on the lives of many women and men.

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  • Resources for Addiction Support

    Happy Fall, everyone!

    Other than the recent forest fire smoke, it’s been beautiful in the Fraser Valley.

    As mentioned in a previous update, one of the ongoing challenges that offenders and paroles face is the battle against addiction.

    I am no expert in addiction, although I’ve had the privilege to support numerous friends and family through facing the challenges of addiction, but one of the experts who has helped me understand the challenges and treatments of addiction more clearly is Dr. Gabor Maté.

    Dr. Maté was very active in caring for patients with significant addiction challenges in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. I find his book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, invaluable. His most recent book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, is also very relevant for the support we provide in reintegration.

    Another resource you might find helpful as you support men and women who may face significant addiction challenges, or perhaps face addiction challenges yourself, is this valuable podcast/YouTube episode with Dr. Maté and Tim Ferriss, Episode 620: “The Myth of Normal, Metabolizing Anger, Processing Trauma, and Finding the Still Voice Within.”

    While it doesn’t communicate from a ‘faith’ perspective, I believe it can be invaluable in helping all of us understand the vulnerabilities in each of our lives where we are especially susceptible to temptation and weakness.

    (Edit for clarity: I just want to take a moment and emphasize that this interview in no way represents Better Life’s endorsement of spiritual or cultural practices discussed in the course of the podcast. My hope is that we could learn from Dr. Maté’s expertise regarding addiction, specifically the discussion of issues of attachment and vulnerability, and the role they play in addiction and recovery.)

    Enjoy!

    Adam Wiggins

    Executive Director