The Alberta government has stepped forward with a 2015 Family and Community Safety Grant to help groups in the province dealing with domestic violence issues.

Sherrie Botten, the executive director of the Rowan House Women's Emergency Shelter says they, and the Calgary and Strathmore shelters, have received money under the program.

"It's a project to start creating a centralized intake procedure and process for all the Calgary and area women's emergency shelters," Botten says. "We can better coordinate services, we can allow women to have one place to call and only need to tell the story once."

She says what happens now is when  a woman is looking for space she could be calling many shelters and telling her story many times because most of the shelters are at capacity so when a woman is looking for somewhere to go, she has to make calls to all the different shelters.

If the program can come to fruition, a single centralized intake line would be set up and anyone in need would only have to call once to find out what's available and what programs would be available.

Botten says there's no timeline for when the program may be up and running.

"It's quite involved when you think of the work that has to happen on an ongoing basis, certainly daily, if not several times during the day," she says. "We're starting from scratch because every shelter has its own process and its own intake line, so I can't say how quickly, but we do have a year to give it a good shot to see what we can develop."

She says the partnering part will be easy because women's shelters all want to work together.

Questions, comments, or story ideas? Email us at news@okotoksonline.com