The Alberta Council of Women's Shelters has released its annual Shelter Data Count results.

It's a snapshot of one day at shelters across the province and provides and idea of just how busy they are.

Sherrie Botten, the Executive Director of the local Rowan House Emergency Shelter says the numbers show how high the demand is for the service they provide.

""There were 924 women helped and 811 children helped throughout the province of Alberta," Botten says. "There were 35 women admitted and 24 children, again in just one day. And the turn aways, the turn aways are always a sad number, there were 80 women and 98 children in Alberta turned away."

She says at Rowan House 49 women and children were served on that one day back in November and three people were turned away because they didn't have space for them.

Botten says they also look at the other things that are happening on that one day, like women's groups or healthy relationship groups and volunteers that come in and do grocery shopping for the clients.
She says they always hope that the numbers will drop but so far that hasn't been the case.

"The number of families that are fleeing abuse and needing the support of Rowan House has increased," she says. "So we do our planning based on that and one of the things were are looking at is our turn aways so we're looking at ways that we can help women stay safe."