At the Rural Outreach Center in East Aurora, the Code Blue Shelter on Olean Road has been in use every night so far this December.

If anyone doesn't have a way of getting there, that's taken care of.

"One of the biggest issues in a rural area is access to anything; food, clothing, services, and we recognize that early on, so we do have a van that we use to pick people up," said Frank Cerny, Rural Outreach Center executive director.

The ROC started in 2007. Last year, they began offering a Code Blue shelter and for the first time this year, they have showers available for anyone that might need them, but for those coming in to just spend the night to escape the cold, they can end up leaving with so much more.

"Our objective is to move people from dependency to self sufficiency, to independence. So we sit down with people and we ask them what their goals are, based on those goals they sign an agreement that they will do the work to work toward those goals and we agree that we will provide the resources, whatever it might be," said Cerny.

Camille Arth, who's one of the social workers at the ROC says that in addition to transportation being one of the biggest issues for people in rural areas, so is building trust with someone that might be seeking help. 

"Just having someone that is familiar with services, that can walk with them and guide them through the process is a big need and it can be any type of services they're under served when it comes to medical care, dental care and then obviously social work services and mental health services," said Arth.

No one that stays at the ROC for the Code Blue shelter is obligated to utilize its other services, but for those that do, the possibility of success can be endless.

"We just had our first college graduate, we have some couples who we have got them into a training program, they have full time jobs, bought homes. So depending on where you're starting and what you're capable of doing in terms of meeting your goals, our objective is to make sure everybody is as good as they can be," said Cerny.