When 26-year-old Shannon Wiley was moved from Victoria General Hospital’s neurological rehabilitation ward to a care ward full of seniors waiting for assisted living placement, her heart sank.

“There were not enough beds, so I had to move the senior ward,” Wiley said of her 2004 experience. “Even today there still are not enough beds.”

Wiley was admitted to the hospital seven months earlier, suffering from dizziness, blurred vision and severe headaches – symptoms stemming from a snowboarding fall.

In the neurological ward, Wiley’s condition improved. Her day was filled with speech, physiotherapy and occupational therapy classes.

But now on the sixth floor awaiting placement in a family care home and not enrolled in the rehabilitation courses, she worried the progress she made would slip away.

October was Wiley’s tentative discharge date, but she didn’t recieve home care placement until May.

Once housed, her name was added to another waitlist for Vancouver Island Health Authority’s out-patient rehabilitation. She started the program two months later, a brush of luck, as today the waitlist is 200 names long.

For eight months Wiley diligently attended out-patient treatment determined to gain back her independence. She wanted to travel and more than anything she wanted to work.

But with the clock ticking on Wiley’s out-patient rehabilitation, she feared her goal was unattainable.

“When you are done the outpatient program that is it,” she said. “Most of use don’t have the money to spend $50 per physio session.”

Unknowingly, Wiley had an angel on her shoulder. The family she’d stayed with set half of the VIHA money paid for accommodating Wiley aside, which they they gave to her for further treatment.

“I don’t think I would have got back to where I am now without her,” Wiley said of her host mother.

Today, Wiley works as a paramedic in Sooke. This year Wiley plans to start surfing again and she joined a search and rescue team.

Wiley is one of the luckier brain injury survivors, said Geoff Sing, manager of brain injury services for the Cridge Centre for the Family, in Victoria.

The lack of support for brain injury survivors could be leading to more homeless on Victoria’s streets, he said.

With funding for VIHA’s out-patient support frozen for the past year and the waiting list long, the Island’s brain injury trauma patients are falling through the cracks, he said.

“We would like to see investment in survivors now,” Sing said. “We would hate to see them become the next generation of homeless people.”

In a recent paper, Sing calculates that out of Victoria’s estimated 1,500 homeless, 780 suffer from brain injury, with 538 of them acquiring the trauma before they became homeless.

“What we need to look at is is new means of support,” he said. “It is a crisis that falls under so many ministries.”

Because brain injury affects an array of society’s gambits, it’s not just the provincial Health Ministry responsibility to foot the bill for proper programing for the estimated 14,000 new British Columbian brain injury survivors annually, Sing said.

Brain injury awareness needs to be incorporated into the city’s plan to end homelessness, he added. If it’s not identified in individuals, addiction and mental health treatment may not be successful.

“You’d just keep missing the biggest piece of the puzzle,” Sing said, noting cost savings benefits in addressing brain injuries immediately.

Approximately 230 people are enrolled in VIHA’s brain injury program for out-patients, and 200 names on the waiting list, said Lois Cosgrave, the authority’s director of home and community care.

“(The waitlist) has been increasing slowly,” she said. “We do have people move through the brain injury program but we are continually receiving new referrals for service.”

As with other aspects of health care, the aging demographic is putting more pressure on services available, she said. Last year, program over spent 20 per cent on its $5 million budget due to demand.

“As with all areas in health services, we face a really difficult task of balancing these competing demands and where our dollars need to go,” she said.

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