By Glory Przekop

Demand high for Odyssey House services

May 7, 2018 | 6:51 AM

There has been an increased demand for services offered by Odyssey House this past year.

Executive Director of the women’s shelter, Ebony Rempel says, they supported 438 women and 201 children in the last 12 months.

“In terms of our outreach and community support and our public education and even our child care and trauma councillors, we offer all those additional services. What’s happened there is we are now just experiencing wait times we have never had in previous years but what I think is scary is people are needing a bed to sleep in and we don’t have the space, and we don’t have the space because we are full.

She says they were forced to turn away 149 women and 123 children but were able to secure other support services for them.

The number of people accessing their Community Support team has increased by 232 percent, going from 138 people to 320 in one year

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Rempel adds several local groups and organizations including the RCMP have reinvigorated the Prevention of Family Violence network to hopefully bring down those numbers.

“Trying to connect with the community in terms of capacity building and get some training and I think it is this kind of collaborative work that will actually shift the needle and make a difference, so we are not continuing to kind of work downstream creating more beds, more shelters.”