News facility will allow West Central Crisis Centre to expand

BY JOAN JANZEN
joanjanzen@yahoo.com

The West Central Crisis Centre (WCCC) has been providing vital services to the community at their current location at 116 - 1st Avenue West, for many years, but that will soon change. Prospects of moving to their new building are looking more promising since their future building was moved into Kindersley and placed on the new basement, at the location near Walmart, in mid-July.

Now work can begin on the basement, and once that’s complete, the staff are hoping to be able to move in some time in November. “It certainly is good to see this project move forward, and become a reality at last!” Misty Leismeister, Manager of the WCCC said.

But the staff has managed to function well in their current location, even though it’s not spacious. They currently provide services for domestic violence, traumatic events response, sexual assault/victim support, safety planning, critical stress management, suicide prevention, anger management, budget counselling, client advocacy, referrals, senior services, and all types of counselling, including individual, marital, crisis, short-term, family and youth counselling. They also provide weekly counselling in the communities of Eston and Kerrobert, have a resource library and every Christmas they organize Santa’s Hut in various communities. As you can see, space restrictions have not prevented the Crisis Centre from providing so many necessary services to our communities.

The new facility will complete the first phase for the WCCC, and will be used as the Office Administrative Building, housing counselling offices, administrative supports and community programming spaces. The structure was donated by Teine Energy, and is a good fit as an administrative building. The second phase will be a storage facility, followed by a 16-bed domestic violence shelter for women and children as the third phase.

“We’re so excited!” Misty said. “It will be so nice to have more space to run more programs, and have a newer building. Now we can do supervised visits and look at opening it up for other organizations to use the space. We’ll be able to offer more services to our clients.

This is the first start to our vision. Now we can grow ideas and have space to implement those ideas. It gives us opportunities that we’ve wanted for so long.”

Their vision will also necessitate the generating of new fundraising ideas in order to make the future phases materialize.

PHOTO BY JOAN JANZEN
The future home of the West Central Crisis Centre.