It’s been a long few months for staff at the Beauséjour Family Crisis Resource Centre after dealing with a sewer backup three days before moving into their new facility in August.
Kristal LeBlanc, the centre’s executive director, says storage bins used for items that were going into the basement were only removed last week after more than $100,000 in damages.
“(The donation room) was unfortunately the hardest hit with our sewer backup so we had all of our products moved in before we officially moved in that week,” LeBlanc says. “That’s where we lost a lot of our donated items. Now, we’re at the end of ‘reconstruction’.”
Another service had to be put on hold as a result while they organize a place space: a place to transfer children to their other parent in abusive relationships or during supervised visits.
“It’s really to de-stigmatize the idea of an ‘exchange,’ especially when there’s domestic violence,” she says. “A lot of times, children are nervous about the exchange. It often happens in public spaces like parking lots, so we wanted to create a different and friendly child-neutral atmosphere.”
The centre sees about 2,000 people per year and is the only 24/7 drop-in centre for mental health supports and victims of family violence in southeast New Brunswick, according to LeBlanc.
The 19,000-square-foot facility offers second-stage housing, an RCMP comfort room for interviews and a forensic medical exam room, meaning victims don’t have to go to the detachment, counselling and group spaces.
But due to demand at their old building, they started a capital campaign two years ago hoping to raise $4 million for the new facility.
“We were really limited where we were on Main Street,” LeBlanc says. “Those clients needed a one-stop facility.”
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The residential housing is for people who identify as women with seven one or two-bedroom apartments, classified as “second-stage units” for women and children leaving violent situations, such as domestic or sexual assault relationships, along with six emergency housing suites which will open in the coming months.
But all the second-stage units will be full next month, LeBlanc says.
“They say ‘build it and they will come,'” she says. “But they were already coming (to) our old facility and having to return to abusive relationships.”
Emergency suites will be offered in the coming months, and they’re also considering a male-housing program.
The crisis centre is hoping to wrap up the capital campaign soon.
“The answer is as quickly as possible,” LeBlanc says. “So that we can look at paving and playgrounds and those things that kind of had to take a back seat because of the sewer backup.”
They’re also trying to break a world record Wednesday at the Avenir Centre as part of an operations fundraiser. The centre is hoping to get the longest strand of banknotes spanning over four-kilometres, or $200,000.
One local business is doing it’s part, raising over $67,000 in $5 bills to support the centre.
“There was a lot of stuff that I learned (at the centre) that it was really important that people, our local people, knew about it,” says Christine Duguay, the owner of Esso in Cap-Pelé.