Scott Rees looks forward to his monthly peer support group run by the Manitoba Brain Injury Association.
Rees, 46, suffered from seizures all his life until he got a frontal lobotomy. He has a lack of certain higher-level cognitive skills such as memory and emotion control.
He meets with the group as a social outing and to relate to others who also have brain injuries. The group meets for dinner, at parks or at The Forks and maintains strong bonds with one another.
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Janice Ress with son Scott
However, the group hasn’t been able to meet since September when the program seemed to cease with no notice to its members.
Rees’s mother, Janice Rees, wonders when the program will run again so people like her son can have a social life.
“These things really mean a lot to them,” she said. “Not everyone has the right supports and sometimes these are the only things they get to do all month.”
Past and current leadership say the lack of staff, volunteers, funding and internal disarray has led to the pause in peer support programs in Winnipeg.
David Sullivan, the new president of the association, said it has no staff to oversee administration and programs and has no idea when they will be able to hire someone.
Programs in other parts of Manitoba are volunteer-run and supported by the group. The association also runs caregiver support groups, information sessions and services such as tax preparation and assistance for applications for disability benefits.
“I don’t have a whole lot of answers right now,” Sullivan said.
He has yet to meet with the board or past president, which he says has led to much of the confusion. The incoming president was executive director of the association from 2006 to 2016.
Sullivan said the organization faces philosophical differences and he’s committed to bringing it back to its roots, which is to serve people with brain injuries.
“Some people are trying to run this organization as a business and call our members ‘clients.’ They’re not clients, they’re members of a group which started out as a self-help group,” he said.
The group was founded in 1987 by a group of husbands whose wives had had aneurysms and were looking for support.
Past president Graham Todd said the problem related to staffing and no increase in funding for a decade.
When the few staff on payroll left the association for other opportunities, it enlisted the help of Morning Star consulting firm to “professionalize” the group, help with operations and recruit an executive director. The position has been vacant since earlier this year.
Staff positions were timed out or not renewed for “strategic” reasons and the organization is in a rebuilding stage since the COVID-19 pandemic, Todd said.
“I don’t think the organization is facing different issues that every small government-funded charity is facing. We struggle with funding,” he said.
The association receives $86,000 in annual funding from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, a spokesperson said. The funding is still in place.
When he was elected president on Dec. 4, Sullivan did not renew the association’s agreement with Morning Star because he said a non-profit shouldn’t enlist help from a consulting firm.
The board of directors is expected to meet on Jan. 6 to iron out operational concerns, Sullivan said.
“It was always a group for the members, by the members,” he said. “We seem to have forgotten that.”
Scott and Janice Rees will have to wait until they receive word when, and if, peer support programs can begin again.
“It’s really a shame,” Janice said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca
Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer
Nicole Buffie is a multimedia producer who reports for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom in 2023. Read more about Nicole.
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