The heart of the Cariboo Brain Injury Association’s mission is in providing peer centered support and mentorship between people who have had a brain injury in their past and those who are newer to their brain injury experience. CBIA also advocates for comprehensive high-quality care for people with brain injuries within the context of medical systems and endeavors to improve community awareness about brain injuries. 

CBIA envisions a future wherein people with brain injuries are:

• Treated with acceptance, understanding, patience, and non-judgment by a community that is able to recognize the signs and symptoms of brain injury in their neighbors and know how to interact appropriately with them;

• Recognized as purposeful human beings who can effectively add value to their communities;

• Able to observe their continued worth to themselves and others even if their physical and/or cognitive abilities have changed;

• Provided timely and respectful medical support that fully encompasses national and provincial brain injury standards of care; and

• Inspired to provide mentorship to others who are newer and/or less supported in their brain injury experience.

CBIA currently focuses it’s programming on benefiting people aged 18 years and over who are no longer eligible for school-based care programs and who have acquired brain injuries. CBIA also provides programming support to the caregivers of these people as well as the parents/caregivers of those younger than 18 years. We do not have the knowledge or skills to effectively support people with other neurological conditions or children with brain injuries at this time, however, we do have a list of resources that we continue to develop that we can provide to these people to assist them in finding appropriate aid.

CBIA conducts its operations within the context of the following values.

• Acceptance, patience, and non-judgment.

• Understanding and empathy.

• Comprehension of brain injury signs, symptoms, and care approaches.

• Promotion of the self-worth and purposefulness inherent in all human beings.

• Services that prioritize human-to-human connection, such as story-telling and laughter, between all participants including programming leaders and any administrative staff or volunteer.

• Services grounded in honest peer experience and evidence-based research that do not presume to constitute medical advice of any kind.

• Services provided within the context of healthy and appropriate professional boundaries.

• Services that do not take responsibility for, or take away freedom to make, the life decisions or recovery of another person or participant.