Donations for Windsor women's shelter will fund education for youth

The Welcome Centre Shelter for Women in Windsor is using a donation to help children stayin school.

It's doing this through a $30,000 donation itreceivedfrom the Solcz Family Foundation.

Executive director Lady Laforet said it will allow them to hire another worker for the next year, who willfocuson education.

• Women-specific shelter in Windsor is overflowing

"It's a huge barrier to get to school, so what we see is a lot of children who are not going to school during their shelter stays because the family's really focused on the emergency situation they're in and on trying to find housing," she said.

Many parents don't know how to get their children back and forth from school.

"Perhaps they're leery of discussing with the school," Laforet said. "You know that they're staying in a homeless shelter or what their situation is at the moment, so the family worker's [going to]be able to hopefully bridge some of those gaps during the emergency shelter stay."

Expanding the shelter

Currently the shelter can accommodate 17 single women. There are 12 beds, five spaces are offered as overflow and people can sleep on mats. She said that's been happening for about a year.

There aren't any designated shelters for families in Windsor, so they're supported by the city through area hotels, and the Welcome Centre Shelter provides social workers to help them out with their housing situation.

"It's not working as well as it could if we had a single site shelter like most municipalities do," Laforet said.

• Women's shelter 'disappointed' old school sold to developer

The search for a larger home is not going well, she said.

"Our needs are very specific," Laforet said.

The new location needs to have between 16,000 and 25,000 sq. ft., which can house single people and families, and be able to keep them separate. And she would likea one storey building.

"Once you start taking all of our unique needs, the area we need to be in, our proximity to schools and bus stops and grocery stores that pool of available buildings gets very, very small."