A new space to help children recover after experiencing domestic violence was officially opened at the Central Alberta Women’s Emergency Shelter in Red Deer on Friday.
The space includes a child-size teepee they can enter to feel safe, a hairdressing room and a teen area with video games and jumbo bean bag chairs.
There is a nursery for younger children and babies, a craft room and a room known as a SNOEZELEN environment, which has a variety of tranquil coloured lights, happy music and various textures to help children recover from trauma.
The Children’s Healing Centre was designed and constructed eight months by Bearden Engineering and True-Line Contracting at a cost of $400,000.
Funds came from local businesses, community groups and local residents. The women’s shelter only has $50,000 more to raise to cover the full cost of the centre.
Heather Pitt, who is the child support supervisor at the shelter, said the new centre — which the shelter staff say is the first of its kind in Canada — allows children to be children.
“It’s a break from reality for the children,” Pitt said.
“For people who have never been in a domestic violence relationship, they don’t understand that the kids are on an adrenalin rush from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed and even when they’re sleeping.
“So they’re always nervous, the adrenalin is always running, they’re hyper because this is about survival. It’s fight or flight for them.”
Pitt said the SNOEZELEN room can help de-stress a child in one day rather than the four days it would normally take.
Ian Wheeliker, executive director of the Central Alberta Women’s Emergency Shelter, said the longer that children are in chronic stress, the harder it is on their bodies, their brain development, their digestive systems and everything goes out of whack.
He said once the children are calmed down, they can get more out of the counselling programs available at the shelter.
He said the shelter generally sees 350 children come through each year, spending two to six weeks there with their family.
The project got started after Wheeliker and former president of the board Ray McBeth were talking during the World Conference for Women’s Shelters in September 2008.
They felt they were doing a good job with the children, but they wanted to do more.
Among the major donors to the project were: Red Deer Tim Hortons, with $26,000; Red Deer RCMP through their National Crime Prevention Fund, with $20,000; Vermillion Energy with $30,000; the Kinsmen Club of Red Deer with $45,000; True-Line Construction with $20,000; Piper Creek Optimists with $30,000; Red Deer Rotary with $45,000; and Bearden Engineering, a division of Genivar, with $5,000. Churches groups, service groups and women’s clubs also contributed thousands of dollars to the project.
sobrien@www.reddeeradvocate.com