The Rowan House Society recently released their annual report.

Covering the April 1, 2022 - March 1, 2023 fiscal year the report summarizes the usage levels of each of their emergency shelter and domestic violence services as well as the amount of people served.

Executive director Linette Soldan says that time span was significant for them in an operational sense.

“That is our first year working at full capacity due to no longer following pandemic restrictions. We saw a tremendous increase in all our services.”

That includes their preventative education program, which includes school presentations.

They made 143 presentations to 4,935 students, with the latter seeing a 265 per cent increase from the previous year.

“Our support line also saw an increase with a 17 per cent increase, which doesn’t surprise us. We knew that due to COVID there was some isolation taking place and sometimes connecting to resources wasn’t as accessible as it can be now,” says Soldan.

The increase with the support line amounted to a total of 2.050 calls and texts.

Their emergency shelter program saw 223 individuals admitted, totaling 132 women and 91 children.

A total of 156 children were served, including their shelter and outreach programs.

Rowan House’s outreach program, which serves clients one-on-one in their communities saw 98 clients total, with 74 of them being new this year.

Rowan House covers the second-largest geographical area in Alberta.

 

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