Past Recipients of the Claudette Bradshaw Innovation Award

The organization provides long-term support and advocacy for youth and young adults up to the age of 21. This support continues until they finish their schooling if they go to college. They work to include youth voices in the diagnostic process using the Medicine Wheel Difference Game Cards for youth. It provides an opportunity for youth to talk about their challenges. It also offers an opportunity for the team to understand their perspective. Including youth voices in the case-planning process post diagnosis helps them with self-esteem and their sense of agency and possibility. The youth pack of the Medicine Wheel Difference Game allows the youth to set their own goals. They then work on them and are given the support they need to accomplish them.

Additionally, the Eastern Door Centre works to develop cultural and community pride by connecting youth living with FASD with Elders. They promote the Elder-Youth relationship by creating opportunities for youth to help Elders and also have fun. This could be working as a team to shovel snow for Elders in the winter. It could also be cooking and then serving them at a community feast.

The organization provides crisis outreach to support older youth with FASD who are homeless and couch surfing. The Eastern Door Centre helps them find housing and connect to services that can help them find shelter, employment or schooling. They also assist youth with mental health issues to get the health services they need as well as the mentoring or support they need to pick up and take prescribed medication.

Their Nogemag Healing Lodge provides a safe place for older youth and young adults to come at all times to participate in a ‘family’ like atmosphere of healing on the land learning traditional skills. Its leadership program has also helped many of the Eastern Door Centre youth to work their way through their low self-esteem and difficulties with relationships into healthy adulthood.

In 2020, the Manitoba FASD Centre and FASD Justice System launched the Adult FASD Justice Program. The program gives young adults (18-25) involved in the justice system in Manitoba access to FASD diagnostic and assessment services. Offenders diagnosed with FASD can access follow-up supports and services to help them with their specific needs and challenges.

This is the first Adult FASD Justice assessment and support program in Canada that has evolved in collaboration with the development of Canada’s first FASD court docket. This program developed through innovative thinking and multiple community partnerships.

“It is life-changing when clinicians can provide, to an individual who has struggled their entire lives, a diagnosis, and some understanding about how their brain works, their strengths and their challenges. For some they feel heard, seen and valued for the first time in their lives. For caregivers to start to understand that there are some things the individual cannot do opposed to won’t do which creates a monumental shift in their understanding and relationship.”

Piruqatigiit is a grassroots organization that serves individuals with suspected and confirmed FASD across Nunavut. “Piruqatigiit” means grow/growing together. Everything they do is centred on Inuit-led and informed knowledge and worldview. All their service provision, knowledge translation, and communications are translated in English and Inuktitut.

Prior to Piruqatigiit, there were no FASD specific services in Nunavut and very few FASD-informed educators and service providers. Jennifer & Noah Noah recognized this gap and started providing free support for community members and education for Government departments in 2016. In 2018, they, along with community members, founded Piruqatigiit as a nonprofit society.

“Piruqatigiit Resource Centre has applied for the Claudette Bradshaw FASD Innovation Award because we are innovation at our core. We strive to support Nunavut communities through innovative programming, resource development and knowledge translation activities that are culturally safe.”

After years of volunteer effort to prevent Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and support those affected by it throughout north eastern Alberta, the Lakeland Centre for FASD opened its doors in 2001. In addition to providing an FASD diagnosis and support to children and adults throughout the north east region, the Lakeland Centre has developed other services for people affected by FASD over the years including: a summer camp for children, supports for youth transitioning to adulthood, mentorship programs for women at highest risk of FASD births, as well as a continued commitment to education and public awareness. In 2011, the 2nd Floor Recovery Centre was developed by the Centre to provide addiction treatment services for women who are pregnant or at high risk of pregnancy who are actively using substances and want to stop. The “2nd Floor” name came from the fact that it is located on the second floor of the main offices of the Lakeland Centre for FASD and is part of their full spectrum of services for individuals potentially affected by FASD.

The inaugural award goes to the team of service providers at the New Brunswick FASD Centre of Excellence. This is one of two centres that offer FASD assessment in the province of New Brunswick, and one of only two bilingual clinics in Canada. They are making waves in the field of FASD assessment and support through their Dream Catcher service delivery model.