A new resource centre for pregnant women in Grande Prairie will be opening downtown.
The Pregnancy Care Centre Grande Prairie and Area is new to the city and will be setting up their office on 99th Street next to Alberta Computers. They are working on becoming affiliated with the Canadian Association of Pregnancy Support Services.
Although the group is different than the Society for the Support for Pregnant and Parenting Teens, President of the new care centre Alex Barendregt explains that there is a need for this type of not-for-profit in the region.
“We primarily want to help people with unplanned pregnancies. That is our primary audience. We want to help those folks out.”
Executive Director Kendra Madsen explains that they will not be offering services but will be more of a hub for service referrals. She says this could mean referring families to services like housing, doctors or social workers.
“We are going to offer free pregnancy tests. We are going to offer maternity and baby clothing. More important, we are going to offer peer support. There are going to be men and women in these centres that can just sit down with people.”
Madsen adds that these volunteers will be able to ask questions to the clients about needs but they won’t necessarily come from a social work background.
“They are just going to be caring volunteers and we are going to offer training from a program, a program that has been developed through many years. Many centres have operated for two to three decades. There is a lot of really good information out there.”
Planning for the organization began around two years ago and Madsen says once they get paperwork sorted, they hope to get renovations under way and could be open within 90 days of that.