Rowan House has released their statistics from the last fiscal year regarding domestic violence in the Foothills region.

Community Relations Coordinator, Ally Cramm, says these statistics are from April 1st of 2017 to March 31st of 2018.

" We had 1673 totals calls to our crisis line, these calls included admissions and information requests, and crisis support. Of those calls, 198 women and children came into shelter," she said.

Rowan House serves several areas from the City of Calgary border, south to Claresholm, east to Vulcan and west to Bragg Creek.

The primary function of the Rowan House Society shelter is to support women and children fleeing domestic violence situations, although Cramm says they do much more than just that.

" We can provide outreach, which is one on one support in the community. We can go to their home, if it's safe, or we can meet them somewhere in the community or they can come in to the shelter and have a meeting with an outreach councillor. We helped 109 women in the community in our last fiscal year." said Cramm.

The facility also provides multiple preventative education sessions on topics ranging from healthy relationships to bullying. In the last year they did 133 presentations to over 3000 students in 11 communities across their service area.

A program called "Leading Change," was also introduced their last fiscal year, which targets men and boys specifically, and works to engage them in the prevention of gender based violence.

" We need to get men on board, because we know that there's a lot of men that do have healthy relationships. They need to take a role in sharing that with other males in the community." said Cramm.

In addition to the Leading Change program, Rowan House also offers a program in shelter for children who have experienced or witnessed domestic violence, which focuses on the developmental issues that can occur from the trauma they have experienced.