A charitable organization for assisting needy families is hoping to open in Steinbach.

Safe Families is a program that assists struggling parents by temporarily placing their children in the home of a volunteer family.

“It’s a preventative step before the point of foster care,” explains the organization's director, Michelle Peters. “The child welfare system deals with cases where abuse has already happened,” she specifies, “and our goal is to get families back on their feet and kids reunited within 90 days.”

Peters says that “other Safe Families sites across Canada and the United States have developed close relationships with their local child welfare systems. This allows Child and Family Services to refer lower risk clients to us in order to keep kids out of foster care, but still get families the assistance they need. Steinbach Safe Families hopes to create a similar working relationship to provide the best support that we can."

Not only does the charity recruit families for taking care of the children, but they also have volunteers to assist the parents in achieving the goals they set for themselves.

Peters says the majority of volunteers come from the local church community and their work is essentially that of the church. “We are returning to the roots,” she says, “and challenging churches to embrace that concept of biblical hospitality and act on that biblical mandate to take care of the widows and the orphans.”

So far, Peters says Safe Families has had no trouble finding volunteers in Steinbach, and despite needing to raise an estimated $32,500, they have suspended all efforts until the provincial emergency is over.