About CONNECT
CONNECT helps people redesign their lives after brain injury and stroke. We achieve this by providing complex and specialized services for people living with brain injury and stroke in a nurturing and innovative community environment. Through our Life Redesign Model™, we empower people by applying our knowledge and experience to coach, challenge and motivate each person to reach their unique personal goals and build a fulfilling life for themselves. CONNECT is one of few organizations accredited through Accreditation Canada using the Acquired Brain Injury standards.
CONNECT was founded by mother-son team Janet and John Sherwood in 1993 to provide a better pathway for people with acquired brain injury (ABI) and stroke. Drawing on their experiences with brain injury within both their family and their home care business, their vision was to create a new style of resource that could improve lives and provide better outcomes for people and their families.
Starting from a single group home in Langley, BC more than 30 years ago, CONNECT Communities has grown to 168 bedrooms in four cities in British Columbia and Ontario, and has served hundreds of people with Acquired Brain Injury (ABI), complex disabilities, addictions and mental health.
CONNECT has honed its Life Redesign Model™, a “doing with” coaching culture of flexibility, creativity and personal accountability leveraging neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to rewire itself) and equitable relationships for better outcomes. The model is interwoven with CONNECT’s values of flexibility, creativity, joy, kindness, learning and passion.
CONNECT is proudly accredited with Exemplary Standing by Accreditation Canada. This standing indicates and validates that CONNECT upholds the highest standards for the people we support and our valued coaches. CONNECT is accredited using the Acquired Brain Injury Standards.
Our People
OUR PEOPLE
CONNECT’s Coaching Resource Team
Our coaching resource team is made up of professional coaches, resource coaches and Life Redesign Coaches. These coaches work directly with the people we support, their families and friends and with each other. We are so committed to coaching, we have integrated coaching into our roles. CONNECT has a whole team of rehab professionals, but we named them specifically to put an emphasis on the coaching aspects of their jobs. Therefore, our Occupational Therapists are called Independence Coaches, our Physiotherapists are called Physical Coaches, our Recreation Therapists are called Play Coaches, our Nurses are called Health and Wellness Coaches, our Speech Language Pathologists are called Communication Coaches, and our Social Workers are called Social Wellness Coaches.
Life Redesign Coaches
CONNECT’s Life Redesign Coaches work with the individuals we support in our homes. They coach individuals to work on achieving the goals in their Life Redesign Plans and support them with community involvement, interdependence and maintaining and developing social capital in their lives. Life Redesign Coaches are hired based on fit, not qualifications, and are typically passionate about helping others to achieve their goals and build a life of meaning. Life Redesign Coaches work within the coaching resource team to help bring “rehab” into everyday life and to serve as extensions of the professional coaches and help the people we support continue to work on “rehab” throughout their days.
Meet Patti
Patti Flaherty has worked in the field of brain injury and rehabilitation for almost 30 years. Before joining CONNECT as Executive Leader in 2007, she was a Senior Operating Officer at Vancouver Coastal Health responsible for the site operations of the GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre. Patti has a degree in physical education, a Master’s of Education and completed the Executive Health Leadership Program at the Rotman School of Management. Patti has helped develop and promote CONNECT’s Life Redesign Model, an approach that emphasizes social capital and person-centred goal-setting in a creative and flexible environment.
Patti is a founding member of the Interdependence Network and former chair for the British Columbia Brain Injury Association (BCBIA). She served as chair for the Pacific Coast Brain Injury Conference Society from 2009 – and was on the steering committee from 1996 – 2005. Patti is an active member of the Canadian College of Health Services Executives since 2005 and has been a mentor for the Executive Mentoring Program for the Canadian College of Health Service Executives. In her downtime, Patti enjoys time with her family and friends. She enjoys yoga, the outdoors, great music and travelling. She counts her father as one of her greatest mentors.
“We meet people where they’re at and we help to coach them to find a way to live a life after a brain injury or stroke that is meaningful to them.”
– Patti Flaherty
Chief Executive Officer
Meet Jamie
Jamie Curran is responsible for supporting our people and making sure CONNECT is a safe, healthy, inclusive place to live and work. He is focused on mirroring, consistency and efficiency between our locations, quality enhancement initiatives, strategic and operational planning, leadership coaching, mentoring and support, and financial stewardship and accountability.
Like Patti, Jamie is a founding member of the Interdependence Network. He is a values-based leader, which definitely shows in the way he interacts within the teams.
Jamie keeps himself busy with two sons, his wife and an adorable German Shepherd named North. He is a huge hockey and sports fan.
“I believe any problem can be solved or improved if everyone would just lead with kindness. That is the culture of CONNECT. Lead with kindness.”
– Jamie Curran
Director of Culture, People and Services
Meet Karen
Originally from the UK, Karen, an Occupational Therapist, worked for ten years in private industry before deciding to change careers and become an Occupational Therapist (1987). A passion for people and a desire to challenge the status quo – especially within health care – have been personal drivers for Karen since, at the age of three, she contracted polio. Karen immigrated to Canada with her family in 1998. She joined CONNECT in October 2008 as Leader of Rehabilitation and Clinical Programs with responsibility for developing a different model of service delivery for those living with brain injury.
As Director of Leading Practice and Life Redesign, Karen’s focus is on evolving our model through innovation and discovery, teaching and learning, competency and practice leader support, service excellent and continuous quality improvement. Karen continues to challenge our teams to think creatively, imagine possibilities, and support change so that the Life Redesign ModelTM can continue to evolve as best practice in the field of brain injury.
Karen likes to indulge her creative spirit either outdoors in the flower garden or in her “studio” creating art.
“The first thing we want to know when someone moves in is, ‘Who are you and what makes you tick?’”
– Karen Tims
Director of Leading Practice and Life Redesign
Meet John
John Sherwood, CEO, has more than 30 years of experience working in health care and holds a BA in Economics. He joined family home care business Classic LifeCare in 1993. At that time he co-founded CONNECT Communities with his mother and business partner Janet Sherwood to address a gap in the system for people after acquired brain injury. Since then, CONNECT has grown to multiple locations in two provinces serving people after brain injury and stroke.
After 30 years deeply involved in the operations of the business, John has changed the way he works at CONNECT to mainly concern himself with people, strategy and finance. He remains actively involved in the business as Owner and Chief Financial Officer (CFO.)
He relates to CONNECT’s person-centred approach where the individual supported is in control of their goals, choices and life. One of John’s favourite activities is fishing, although skiing and sailing are close seconds.
“I am a freedomist at heart. At CONNECT, we try to provide an experience for the people we support that is in line with what we would want for ourselves. For me, that is all about personal choice and preference and not about being prescribed how it’s going to go and how to live my life.”
– John Sherwood
Owner & Chief Financial Officer
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