To the Editor,
Re: Haven Society forced to cut back, March 27.
With all the news coverage Haven Society has experienced lately, we feel it is important to clarify with the community some of the issues we face.
Absolutely, we find ourselves with a serious shortfall for our next fiscal year, and to mitigate the extent of this we have needed to resort to some cuts in hours to our programs.
However, this has not resulted in anyone losing their job, and a number of the cuts are in positions that are supportive of the work we do, such as front desk staff hours and hours in other administrative positions, though we have very few of those.
Administrative costs are often minimally calculated into specific program funding, and are therefore kept to a minimum with most supervisors also doing frontline work.
We will be maintaining the hours we are contracted to have in each program, plus some of the extra hours in our child and youth program as well as our victim services program.
We are still able to provide services in these programs over and above what we are contracted for, due to the generosity of this community. For this we are incredibly grateful.
In these economic times, it is definitely harder to fundraise and our expenses are up due to the heavy use of our services.
Referrals to our programs have gone up significantly, and we definitely have a harder time coping with the number of families accessing our services. So many services in Nanaimo are struggling, and we certainly feel the weight of that pressure.
On the whole, we are optimistic that we will weather this more challenging time as all staff, board members and volunteers are working together to share the impact and to make this as painless as we possibly can, for all involved.
We will continue to serve the community in the way we always have, and are very committed to the safety of women and children in our community.
Anne Spilker and Marilyn Chapman
Haven Society
