CUPS Corner: Moving toward brain-science based solutions
Nothing like celebrating our 30 anniversary year by dusting off the yearbooks and going back in time. If you’ve been keeping up on our CUPS blog, you may have noticed that we’ve been celebrating our birthday throughout the year and highlighting key milestones that capture how we’ve evolved to become the science-based organization we are today.
So far, we’ve covered the early years, getting established in the community, some special community partnerships and how we headed into a new millennium. Now, we’re diving into the 2010s, where, after over two decades of community service, CUPS realized that in order to make a lasting impact in the lives of our clients, it meant moving beyond delivering basic services.
Discovering the Brain Story
Seeking to make an impact in the community and building resilience in vulnerable Calgarians, the CUPS team rolled up their sleeves in the 2010s and started researching. They soon learned of a new approach that involved applying brain science to develop integrated care plans that are tailored to the person’s unique needs. The research revealed that the experiences we have when we are young shape our brains for a lifetime, and that healthy brain architecture sets the foundation for healthy life outcomes. CUPS realized that we needed to change the narrative. The question shouldn’t be “what’s wrong with you?” it should be, “what happened to you?”
Accommodating Growing Brains
Realizing how big the potential was of such an approach, CUPS set out to redefine itself using the science of brain development to provide integrated programs and services that help clients manage adversity and build lasting resilience. In 2012, CUPS moved into a larger building, expanding its services by 30 per cent. Along with this growth began intentional efforts to understand the underlying causes of why people were seeking support in the first place — the key data and metrics that would eventually become the foundations of the brain-science based Resiliency Matrix.
Realizing the power of community, CUPS also began to develop partnerships with researchers from the Harvard Centre for the Developing Child, the Alberta Family Wellness Initiative and the University of Calgary to move our collective knowledge forward.
Is your mind — or should we say brain! — blown yet?
Keep joining us on our blog over the coming month as we continue to go more in-depth into our past and celebrate where we’ve come from. As the famous quote from novelist James Baldwin says: “If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.”
Here we go, 2020! We can’t wait to see what impact CUPS can make in our community for the next 30 years — and beyond!
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