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  • Healthy Reintegration Part 3: Support & Partnerships

    As Better Life has worked together with faith communities across the Pacific Region, we hear many different responses to the invitation to provide reintegration support.

    Some faith communities and their members feel that providing reintegration support is an important expression of their faith. They’re all in, and they want to provide support as effectively as possible.

    Others respond with desire to get involved, but feel overwhelmed by questions.

    Our hope at Better Life is that having clarity around a REINTEGRATION STRUCTURE AND SYSTEM answers many of your questions and gives you confidence that you can help develop a healthy reintegration pathway that can literally be life changing for a parolee and an invaluable contribution toward them experiencing a better life.

    However, we recognize that Structures and Systems only take us so far.

    We experience this in our own life. At times we have great aspirations, sometimes expressed in New Year’s resolution. But living out our resolutions can be another thing entirely.

    This leads us to acknowledge that we’re all individuals who are made up of many different influences—our families, our experiences, and our habits, to name a few.

    What type of influence has each of these areas had on our life?

    As human beings, we each respond to varied circumstances in different ways. Specifically, we experience and are impacted by trauma in very different ways.

    In your own family, your experience growing up may have impacted you in a radically different way than a sibling. You could have experienced very similar circumstances, but how you experienced those circumstances and integrated them may have been very different for each of you.

    The same is true for a parolee.

    You’ve listened to their story, you’ve created a pathway together that you hope will lead to a healthy reintegration experience, but so much of an individual’s experience, their growth, their ability to overcome painful experiences and trauma, and to believe that they can live a different and better life, rests with them.

    With this understanding, we want to assure you that not only is Better Life made up of an experienced team of Reintegration Chaplains, but that we are a part of an invaluable network of organizations and caregivers committed to healthy reintegration.

    The Better Life Reintegration Chaplain who, in many cases, has provided an inmate support for a year within the prison, who has worked with the inmate’s Correctional Team and has supported them to complete the recommended steps so that they can have a positive parole hearing outcome, is now available to support you as you support that parolee.

    While the Better Life reintegration chaplain doesn’t remove their support from the inmate as they enter parole, they shift their primary support to you as a caregiver.

    When you have questions, when you wonder what healthy next steps should be, when you’re concerned about certain patterns of thinking, or behaviour, and wonder what to do next, the Better Life Reintegration chaplain is available to provide you with support.

    This is also true of the connections Better Life can provide you with various reintegration partners—often beginning with the parolee’s Parole Officer. Through the Parole Officer you can gain a clear understanding of what the parolee’s conditions are, as well as specific areas that may need attention (work, education, therapy, certain thought patterns, etc.)

    Beyond a connection with a parolee’s Parole Officer, Better Life has close relationships with many Reintegration Partners operating in various regions and areas of specialization.

    At Better Life we are here to support you. We believe that you can make a life changing difference in providing reintegration support, and we want to support you to do that effectively.

    Thank you for joining us for this series on providing healthy reintegration. We’re grateful to be on this journey with you.

    With thanks,

    Adam Wiggins

    Executive Director

  • Healthy Reintegration Part 1: Structure

    2023 has been a year of growth and development for Better Life Integration and Support as we continue to refine our process for providing a healthy reintegration experience for offenders and parolees who ask for faith community reintegration.

    While Better Life recognizes that each individual is unique (has a distinct story and experience), we also understand that healthy reintegration requires specific structure, system, and support.

    In fact, this past summer (2023), we developed a new set of Faith Community Reintegration videos for individuals and faith communities providing reintegration support to access online. These short videos are built around:

    1. Reintegration Structure
    2. Reintegration System
    3. Reintegration Support

    To access this free online training resource, please email adam.betterlife@gmail.com for the link and password.

    Over the next three blogs/newsletters, we’ll also look in more detail at the three components of healthy reintegration, as outlined above.

    We begin with having a clear understanding of Reintegration Structure.

    We picture Reintegration Structure as a Bridge. In fact, you’ll often hear us refer to the “Reintegration Bridge.”

    The Reintegration Bridge is composed of four parts:

    1. The Support holds the weight and stress of the bridge
    2. The Onramp is where the bridge is entered
    3. The main Body of the bridge
    4. The Offramp is the exit from the bridge

    1. The SUPPORT


    We all recognize how essential support is for a (structural) bridge. Comprehensive support is just as essential for Reintegration, and not just in the sense of providing support to the parolee, but also in giving a mentor or volunteer the capacity and strength to provide reintegration support.

    On one hand, providing reintegration support isn’t for the faint of heart. Every experience of providing support is unique, ranging from parolees that need intensive support, to those who require little support, but the experience can often be intense.

    At the same time, there is such an opportunity for mentors and volunteers of faith to experience life transformation, both in themselves and in the individual they are supporting.

    As you consider providing reintegration support, you can ask yourself the following questions:

    • How would you rate yourself in terms of your personal health, your emotional health, your relational health, your self-awareness?
    • How clear is your practice of personal boundaries? (If you’re unclear about the idea of boundaries, Drs. Cloud and Townsend wrote an excellent book on boundaries.)
    • Where do you get your support from?
    • How do your faith and faith practices provide you with clarity and strength when you are investing in others?

    Of course these aren’t questions solely for providing reintegration support, but healthy life principles for each of us.

    As you invest yourself in providing reintegration support, you need to be clear on where you gain your support to enable you to support another. As you enter into providing reintegration support, have a plan of what you are proactively doing so that you are and remain healthy.

    Identify the people you can go to if you are feeling challenged, or discouraged, or in need of direction. It may be a group of close friends, a spiritual leader, or mentor from your faith community. We encourage you to identify those people in your life that can support you and pray for you as you begin this journey.

    Without question, the experience of providing a parolee with reintegration support can be one of the greatest opportunities for you to grow in your own spiritual life.

    2. The ONRAMP

    The Onramp is well defined for Better Life. It illustrates what is normally a period of up to 12 months where support is offered to an offender in the Correctional Institution.

    An inmate contacts Better Life, either through a prison chaplain, through their Institutional Parole Officer, or personally through the Better Life toll free number.

    A Better Life staff member dedicated to that inmate’s specific prison meets with them and undertakes an intake interview.

    During the interview there are specific questions that we ask, but in general, we are seeking to understand an inmate’s motivation and the degree of interest they have in seeking reintegration support from a faith community.

    One of Better Life’s non-negotiables is the willingness of an inmate to provide full disclosure.

    We take a faith community’s trust very seriously, and therefore, view an inmate’s willingness to provide full disclosure an essential for their healthy reintegration experience and for the potential of their relationship with the faith community, mentors and volunteers.

    What’s significant for mentors and volunteers to understand is during that 12 month period, a Better Life staff member is working closely with the inmate to develop a relationship of trust with them, to understand their correctional management plan and team, and to begin building a connection with a potential faith community for when they achieve a positive parole hearing outcome.

    The relationship of trust between the inmate and the Better Life staff member is invaluable for the faith community to understand the needs of the inmate and the faith community’s potential to support them.

    3. The BODY of the Bridge

    Best practice in healthy reintegration is, as an inmate enters into parole, they are quickly connected with their supportive faith community. This connection may have already been established while the inmate was within the Correctional Institution.

    Better Life’s practice is that the week an individual enters parole, if not the day of, the parolee is introduced to a representative of their respective faith community.

    At times, the individual’s community parole officer may request to be included in this meeting.

    During the initial meeting the parolee will share their story. A Parolee’s willingness to share their story helps to ensure their safety and the safety of the faith community as well, and begins to create a healthy reintegration pathway.

    The initial meeting is also an opportunity for the faith community representative to talk about the ways a parolee can access the community and experience their support.

    While each of the four stages of the Reintegration Bridge are important, the contribution of Stage Three is invaluable. It is in and through the faith community that a parolee experiences:

    • The opportunity to experience trusted relationship(s)
    • Engagement in empowering faith practices
    • Support for the tangible needs that a parolee may have, including:
      • Employment
      • Housing
      • Education
      • Therapy, which may address areas of Trauma, Addiction and Mental Health

    4. The OFFRAMP

    The goal of reintegration is a healthy reintegration experience, with the ultimate outcome that a parolee becomes a contributing member of society.

    However, it’s important to recognize that healthy reintegration isn’t always linear.

    In other words, reintegration support doesn’t guarantee that the parolee will never again experience challenges with addiction, or mental health, certain temptations or unhealthy behaviours.

    A Parolee’s experiences along the reintegration pathway are always informing those that provide support with a clearer picture of what is going to help the parolee move forward in their reintegration.

    For instance, an offender enters parole and is provided with reintegration support by loving, wise caregivers. But the offender cannot overcome the temptations of their addiction, and by giving into their addiction, has parole revoked because they breached their conditions.

    It may be easy to believe that the caregivers failed to provide healthy reintegration support. However, instead of a sense of failure, such experiences are invaluable in helping provide a more holistic, comprehensive pathway for the parolee.

    The parolee’s challenges with addiction, or any challenges for that matter, alert us to the specifics of what the individual needs to move forward.

    For example:

    • For an individual that struggles with challenges with alcohol or drug addiction, the new plan will include the individual going into addiction treatment.
    • For those who are challenged by sexual addiction, the new plan will include becoming a member of a CoSA group that specifically provides structure and accountability for sexual addiction.
    • For those who are overwhelmed by trauma, or are challenged by other issues of mental health/illness, the new plan will include being under the care of a therapist, or a psychiatrist, if medication is required for treatment.

    The point is, we use the awareness that comes from the parolee’s experience to inform what a healthy reintegration pathway will look like for the individual.

    In conclusion, the support and development of trusted relationships that come from members of a parolee’s faith community are invaluable for their healthy reintegration.

    While a parolee’s reintegration may not always be linear, the development of trusted relationships with faith community caregivers can be life changing.

    In the next Better Life Newsletter we will look at the importance of having a clear REINTEGRATION SYSTEM.


    With thanks,

    Adam Wiggins

    Executive Director

  • Does faith community reintegration work for every offender?

    Recently a new friend asked me what I did for a living.

    I began to tell him about the vital work of community reintegration. His response? “Good luck with that!”

    Frankly, I wasn’t surprised—and perhaps you’ve had similar responses as well.

    Hardly a week goes by without national or provincial news about a high-profile offender who has reoffended. Such headlines persuade us there is no hope for a healthy reintegration experience.

    Thankfully, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

    While the work of reintegration can be very complex, in general, the high-profile cases that capture news headlines are more often than not a result of an offender leaving a correctional institution with no meaningful, comprehensive support.

    We know that healthy reintegration becomes possible when we can help offenders into the ‘relational resource centre’ of their church or faith community.

    When healthy relationships of trust are established and modelled, when accountability is nurtured, and when resources such as employment, therapy, addiction treatment and housing are made available, a parolee begins to gain one of the invaluable qualities of life: hope.

    And what we are discovering is, when a parolee does re-offend, the re-offence is typically less severe than previous offences. Further, that situation becomes an opportunity to focus our relationships and resources more closely on and around the specific challenges that parolee is wrestling with.

    Does faith community reintegration work for every offender?

    Full disclosure: yes . . . and no.

    Yes, because:

    Every dimension of support that ‘we’ (the Better Life Team and all the amazing churches and faith communities, mentors, and volunteers) can offer impacts a parolee’s life for the better, and often for eternity.

    Just this spring, LS entered parole. Because of the nature of his crime, he couldn’t go back to his former occupation. But LS was willing to begin again at the bottom. He recognized his need for the support of his church community.

    Recently, a Better Life Team member and I met with LS. He shared examples of his growing faith and his desire to serve in his church in the area God has gifted him (to give back).

    He spoke about Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality, an excellent book by Dr. Henry Cloud that LS’s Better Life reintegration partner had given him before he was released on parole, and how he is applying its principles in his life each day.

    He talked about how, while humbly being willing to ‘begin at the bottom,’ he was now being given the opportunity to provide site management and the promise of greater advancement in the future in his new field.

    The story of LS’s life is being written, or perhaps ‘rewritten,’ in such a redemptive way.

    Another recent example is CM.

    On the day of CM’s release, the Better Life reintegration partner, who had been supporting him while he was still inside, and I accompanied him to a church within a close distance from his halfway home.

    CM told the pastor his story and the pastor welcomed CM into his community and talked with him about the ways that he could experience meaningful relationships and support at the church. A pathway for healthy reintegration was created for CM to travel on.


    So, where does the ‘No’ come in? When doesn’t faith community reintegration work?

    Really, the only time faith community reintegration can’t ‘work’ is when there’s no church or faith community available to reintegrate the individual into.

    And that, in a nutshell, is the challenge.

    Our hope, our prayer, and our commitment as Better Life is to have trained, equipped and supported churches and faith communities throughout the Pacific Region that are ready to welcome and support a parolee through their community reintegration.

    We are continually meeting with and providing training for churches and faith communities, but we need so many more.

    And, certainly for Christians, our faith compels us directly from the words of Jesus to invest in the ‘least of these.’ (Matthew 25)

    On this Giving Tuesday*, I would like to ask you to consider responding in two ways:

    • First, are you a part of a church or faith community that Better Life could meet with and help train and resource as a welcoming and supportive community for healthy reintegration? Email adam.betterlife@gmail.com to start the conversation.
    • Second, will you consider being a financial supporter of Better Life through regular giving or a one-time gift?

    Your financial contribution will enable Better Life to continue to provide training, resourcing and support to church and faith communities so that their doors are opened and their mentors and volunteers are prepared to provide a life-changing experience for a parolee.

    With thanks,

    Adam Wiggins

    Executive Director

    *”GivingTuesday is a global generosity movement unleashing the power of people and organizations to transform their communities and the world. GivingTuesday was founded in 2013 in Canada by CanadaHelps.org, GIV3 and several other founding partners.”—from GivingTuesday.org