{"id":26297,"date":"2020-04-03T17:18:34","date_gmt":"2020-04-03T21:18:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26297"},"modified":"2020-04-03T17:18:41","modified_gmt":"2020-04-03T21:18:41","slug":"social-distancing-proving-a-challenge-to-yellow-brick-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/social-distancing-proving-a-challenge-to-yellow-brick-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Social distancing proving a challenge to Yellow Brick House"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Social isolation and physical distancing are necessary to\naddress COVID-19 but, at the same time, can be \u201cabsolutely detrimental\u201d to the\nhealth and wellbeing of women and children trying to flee domestic violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, according to Lorris Herenda, Executive Director of\nYellow Brick House, the Aurora-based shelter for women and children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the organization is rising to the occasion, deploying\nsome out-of-the-box thinking to continue providing shelter services while, at\nthe same time, reassuring the public of their commitment to lend a hand to\nthose looking to get to safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor women who find themselves in this situation, and I\nknow they are listening to the news and feeling like they have nowhere to go\neven more, but we are encouraging women to reach out to our crisis line,\u201d she\nsays. \u201cThat might be more challenging if their partner is always home with\nthem, but, if possible, if they have a moment to make a call or text our crisis\nline, we can get them out and into a hotel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are making contingency plans for these women, but we\nhave already had a 25 per cent increase in our crisis calls because women are\nexperiencing the negative effects of self-isolation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being in a situation like this is always stressful, she\nsays, but Yellow Brick House staff have been spearheading \u201cnew and innovative\nways\u201d to help ease the stress by keeping women in shelters busy. It is about\nproviding a routine, she says, and this can be as simple as getting dressed,\nsetting goals, and accessing online resources for physical and creative\nactivities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur staff are available to speak to them, which is a\nvery crucial part of the daily checking on, counselling sessions that are\nongoing, both with women and children, and the message that we\u2019re all in this\ntogether. Because women and children in shelters are surrounded by such strong\nsupport from our staff, I think they are actually feeling very\u2026 It is kind of\ngetting through this as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yellow Brick House operates two shelters in York Region,\nthe first of which is in Aurora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Aurora shelter is not a purpose-built facility and\nthis has led to some challenges that Yellow Brick House is looking to solve.\nThe building has only seven bedrooms yet, at press time, nine women and twelve\nchildren were sheltering in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t assign a bedroom per family and they have to\nshare it, which is a challenge,\u201d says Ms. Herenda. \u201cAll of our common living\nareas such as the kitchen and the living room give structure to a home, but\nthey\u2019re small, so we do try to instruct women to be one family at a time in the\nkitchen preparing the meal, so to speak, but there is always overlap,\nespecially when you have, out of twelve children, six under the age of four. It\nis very difficult to contain little ones in a tiny room.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To help address this problem, Yellow Brick House is\nmoving a \u201csufficient number\u201d of women and children to hotel rooms so some can\nremain at the shelter as they are now, maintaining social and physical\ndistancing, while others will be practicing the same in their hotel rooms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLooking at the logistics of that, there is an additional\ncost to a not-for-profit in implementing that,\u201d says Ms. Herenda. \u201cThat is why\nwe are looking at a very detailed plan on how that is going to be possible. All\nintakes in the last three weeks have already been placed in hotels. We have not\nbrought new intakes into our shelters. The plan was they remain in hotel for 14\ndays and then they can be [re-located] to the shelter once the self-isolation\nperiod is over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs we are moving families into hotels\u2026we are reaching\nout to local restaurants to see if they are willing in the short term to donate\na hot meal, or even a cold meal, for the women and children who are in the\nshelters or in hotels. We\u2019re managing now with grocery deliveries and all of\nthat, so getting help from local businesses in terms of food preparation will\nbe fantastic. We\u2019re also looking for some supplies and donations that some\npeople might have extra of at home, such as toilet paper, which has\ndisappeared, paper towels, hand sanitizer, cleaning products, milk, sanitary\npads, diapers and everything physical because shelters are in a high mode of\ncontinuous assurance that all surfaces are cleaned at least four times a day.\nWe are extremely grateful for everything that our community can do for us and\nfor the women and children who find themselves in this unfortunate situation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get in touch with Yellow Brick House for non-emergencies such as fundraising and general inquiries, call 1-800-263-2231 or visit yellowbrickhouse.org. If you\u2019re in crisis, the 24-Hour Crisis Line can be reached at 1-800-236-3247.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social isolation and physical distancing are necessary to address COVID-19 but, at the same time, can be \u201cabsolutely detrimental\u201d to the health and wellbeing of women and children trying to flee domestic violence. This, according to Lorris Herenda, Executive Director of Yellow Brick House, the Aurora-based shelter for women and children. But the organization is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6Q9","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 07:13:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}