Alberta women's shelters see a 25% increase in admission requests

More people are asking women's shelters for help and more are being admitted to emergency shelters, according to a new report from the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters.

From April 1 of last year until March 31 of this year, Alberta women's shelters received more than 65,000 calls seeking support — an increase of 25 per cent from the previous year. 

Emergency shelter admissions also increased by a quarter to 6,989.

The report also said shelters are facing a staffing crisis because of stagnant wages and operating costs, inflationary pressures and a drop in donations.

"Some shelters are even considering closing their unfunded beds despite being at capacity every night," executive director Jan Reimer said at a news conference on Wednesday,

Reimer says these compounding factors mean many women are not receiving the help they need.

Shelters turned away more than 28,000 women, seniors and children in the last fiscal year — an increase of 52 per cent. 

More than half of the admission refusals were due to shelters being full, while others were because of other reasons, including staff shortages and a lack of resources to meet complex needs.

Linda McLean, executive director of the Brenda Strafford Foundation in Calgary, said survivors with children in their care are spending an average of six weeks on a waiting list to enter a second-stage shelter. Second-stage shelters provide longer-term transitional housing and services like legal support and counselling. 

For single women, the wait for these shelters is six months. 

"In a lot of cases, women are making that choice to return to an abuser because they don't have another option and they're not willing to put their children through the stress of not knowing where they're going to be sleeping tonight," McLean said.

Reimer said shelters need at least 20 per cent more money from the provincial government to operate.

Jeremy Nixon, the minister of seniors, community and social services, is examining how much social service sector workers earn and has said their pay has been frozen for too long. 

"We need a good plan going forward to meet the needs of women fleeing violence," Reimer said.