Unfortunately during good economic times and bad, the Central Alberta Women’s Emergency Shelter remains busy.

Executive Director Ian Wheeliker says they’ve been feeling the crunch the last couple of years with a lot of women calling to find the shelter is at capacity “so what we have actually created now is a community based crisis team and the idea behind that is if a woman calls and can’t get into shelter today we can offer immediate crisis counselling services, safety planning and get the ball rolling right off the bat.  We have 14 bedrooms and there is 40 beds for women and children, we tend to run in the high 20’s to mid 30’s”.

Wheeliker says the average stay for a woman who is leaving a domestic violence relationship is 20-25 days with that number creeping up more as of late as it becomes more difficult to find safe and affordable accommodations.

On average the shelter will see 15% of women more than once.

CAWES is working with a number of Central Alberta agencies on a collective impact project to combine resources and capacities to better serve families through high security affordable housing.