Snapshot of our Womens Work

This is a report of our Women and Family Home, written by Paula Katzberg, our Volunteer Womens Resident Manager of the LifeChange Discipleship Program. It was written to reflect the first quarter of our operations, and it is an excellent snapshot of our womens work! If you don't have time to read it all, let me recommend the section, "Growing Pains." Very funny!


Overview
The new Souls Harbour Rescue Mission (SHRM) Women’s Home at 1380 Elphinstone Street, Regina, opened March 1, 2007. One resident and the 2 children living with her moved into the facility that day from the old women’s wing at 3535 8th Avenue. A recent graduate of the SHRM LifeChange program moved into another room, as an Intern. More residents gradually joined the program, and by the end of March all 7 usable rooms were occupied. At the end of June, all 9 rooms were occupied.

Statistics
In all, there have been 11 residents at this facility. The resident that moved from the old facility graduated in May, and moved out at the end of that month. Four residents relapsed and either left voluntarily or were asked to leave in accordance with our zero tolerance for drugs and alcohol at SHRM. Another client relapsed, but took the option of coming back after 10 days at detox, which strengthened her commitment to the LifeChange program. Due to the absence of a Women’s Shelter in Regina at this time, (except for battered women), she was permitted to return to SHRM after 8 days, as the detox centre needed her bed. Three of the clients who moved in during March have now completed the Stabilization phase and graduated to Phase II of the LifeChange program.

The occupancy rate for March – June 2007 was 83%, with between 1 and 5 children living at the Women’s Home with their mothers, and another 1 to 3 children visiting their mothers. See the last page of this report for more details.

Rent has been charged in the amount of $230.00 per room, plus $60.00 for board and $100 for each live-in child. Community Resources pays this amount for most of the women. The Intern is allowed to stay for free, as a part of her payment package. Ten residents have paid rent 37 times from March 1 until June 30. This has resulted in an income of $6342.66.

The size of the waiting list has varied from none, when we were starting up in March, to 11. However, if there is no space for them at the time they initially contact us, it is unusual for them to join the program. By the time a room is available, they have often moved, relapsed, or lost interest, in which case they usually do not return our calls. As of mid-July, there are 5 women on the waiting list.

Staff and Volunteers
The Women’s Home Resident Manager is a full-time volunteer. As mentioned previously, an Intern works a number of evening supervisory shifts. Another recent graduate volunteers as one of the other evening supervisors. Other volunteers also assist as evening supervisors, facilitate the weekly Overcomers sessions, or take residents to appointments.

A volunteer and her husband “adopted” one of the bedrooms, and undertook to furnish it. This volunteer has also generously taken each client out on a shopping trip and lunch, and has become very close to all of them. They were very disappointed when she told them she is moving to Alberta at the end of July, and are planning a farewell party for her. Community involvement includes offering free scrap-booking once a week, a sewing class and a massage for a resident in pain from the side-effects of Hepatitis C injections.

Volunteers helped with modifications to the main floor to create the apartment for the live-in Resident Manager. They put up a wall to create a 2nd bedroom; walled off a hallway to make a laundry; and made a doorway to turn an office into a living room. A team of volunteers removed old carpet and laid laminate flooring throughout the apartment and in the office. An elderly couple undertook to paint the whole apartment and the office themselves. They later returned to paint the main entrance and hallway.

Growing Pains
At first, the furnishings were very basic: most rooms just having a mattress on the floor and either a desk or a dresser. The SHRM Women’s Auxiliary donated 7 bunk beds consisting of a double futon plus an upper single bed. The futon mattresses had overstuffed and/or understuffed sections, and they were lumpy and very uncomfortable. There was one with a huge lump down the middle that the residents nick-named the “man in the middle”. The owner of the store that had supplied them agreed to take the mattresses back, but it took quite some time for the upgraded ones to arrive. The residents were so pleased to have a safe place to sleep, they did not complain, but joked about it. However, they were delighted when they finally had comfortable mattresses. In the mean time, the store owner replaced the old-fashioned second-hand living room furniture with new leather sofas and matching lamps. Other donations of desks, chairs, dressers, bedside tables and lamps trickled in, and as of mid-July our only remaining deficiencies for the bedrooms are 2 small wardrobes for the rooms that do not have closets, and a couple of desks to replace ones that were brought from the old women’s wing, which is now used as a family wing for men with custody of their children. There are plans to set up a couple of computers and Internet for the residents in the library, but the only computer donated so far does not work.

As is often the case with moving into an older building, there were a number of unexpected problems the first few weeks. As the snow on the flat roof started melting, it became clear why the additional 2 rooms smelled badly – the roof needed replacing. The water dripped down the light fixture in one of the rooms, into a bucket placed underneath, so the clients nick-named it the “fountain light”. The company that replaced the roof also replaced the roof on the garage (at no cost to SHRM). Once the roof was replaced, the 2 rooms were repaired and painted, and were available for clients on May 28. There were other minor repairs, such as doors that wouldn’t close, dripping taps, plugged sinks, and broken door bells and windows. With the assistance of a contractor, these were mostly completed by the end of May. A donor offered to replace the carpet in the building, and this work is underway as of mid-July, one floor at a time. In addition, the carpet in the upstairs bathrooms is being replaced with vinyl flooring; and in the basement dining room and front entrance by ceramic tile.

Conclusion
Clients with addictions who are not fully committed to changing their lives typically did not stay more than one or two weeks before relapsing. The only exception in this period was a mother who stayed 55 days and could not reconcile herself to her children being in foster care, then reverted to the coping mechanism she was most familiar with - drugs. Most of our clients have been users of crack cocaine and alcohol with a history of childhood abuse of various types. One came from jail, having served time for defrauding her employer to support her drug use. Another arrived pregnant, having returned to drugs and prostitution when her children were taken from her. Yet another did not plan to come to Regina, but came as a result of a coin toss when she needed to run yet again from her old life style of drugs and violence, and came to the Women’s Home 2 days after arriving in Regina. They all have different, heartrending stories to tell, but they all have one thing in common – their deep gratitude for this Women’s Home, and the chance it offers to become the beautiful, free person they were meant to be through the SHRM LifeChange program.