Three days before Thanksgiving last year, Kathleen Morgan and her daughter Caitlin arrived on the doorstep of the Good Shepherd Center's Mother-Child Residence. For two years, the single-parent family had bounced around from shelter to shelter. Now they were at the end of their rope.

After her interview, the director and a case manager told Kathleen they would let her know if she had been accepted into the transitional family program housed in a spacious two-story craftsman home with a high wrought-iron fence and shrubs out front and a former carriage house and playground in back.

But when the frantic mom said she and Caitlin had been making do at a welfare hotel and had to be out that afternoon, she was told they could stay the night. The two have lived at the residence ever since.

"The day I came here, I would have been on the street had they not let us stay," recalls the 51-year-old mother with reddish hair and bangs, sitting in a wicker chair in the residence's makeshift computer lab/kids' library. "I was desperate. And I would have had to give my daughter up. I wouldn't have put her on the street. I couldn't do that. But this place is truly here to help women with children, and that's kind of rare with shelters."

Kathleen should know.

During the last three years, she and her now 11-year-old daughter have stayed at half-a-dozen different shelters and transitional houses. Their homeless odyssey began after years of domestic violence with a male partner, who managed a restaurant, she had left but returned to when their daughter was 5 1/2. They rented a home on the Westside in upper-middle class Rancho Park, and Caitlin was attending and doing well at St. Joan of Arc School.

"I'd forgotten what it was like," she admits. "And over a two-year period, he just basically verbally, physically, emotionally abused me. Emotionally, that's the worse part of the abuse, even worse than the physical stuff. You just feel like you can't do anything."

But the last straw was a brutal beating that came out of nowhere while she was washing the dishes. He said something to her, and Kathleen made a remark he didn't like. In front of their daughter, he grabbed her sore nose, which was swollen and infected from a dog scratch, and twisted it hard all the way around, ripping apart the septum and disfiguring her face.

He was prosecuted, receiving only a three-year suspended sentence, but at least was finally out of the house. For a while, life settled down, as Caitlin continued to excel in parochial school. And Kathleen inherited what she calls a "substantial" amount of money after her own mother died.

But then checks started coming back because of insufficient funds and her savings account suddenly dropped drastically. Kathleen believes her ex-partner had somehow gained access to both. After she got a restraining order against him, members of his family started showing up in Rancho Park and harassing her.

The frightened mother decided they had to get away. Using what money was left from the inheritance, she rented a large apartment with a kitchen at an extended-stay hotel near the Los Angeles International Airport.

"It seemed like a good idea to me at the time," she says, shrugging. "Unfortunately, it was expensive, and I didn't know anything about being homeless then. So we only lived there about a month-and-a-half before my money started getting low. My brother bailed me out, and we stayed at cheaper motels for a few weeks.

"Then I ran out of money, and I couldn't keep asking. So the only place I could go was the Union Rescue Mission.

"I was terrified when we were driving down there," she remembers. "But it's wonderful that they accept women with children. I actually met some of the nicest people on the street. When we were walking around, I'd hear 'kid coming!' and people would put away their drugs and hide whatever they were doing."

After five months at the mission on skid row, Kathleen and Caitlin lived in the few local shelters and transitional residences that accept women with children, with their longest stay being a year at a place called Charlotte's House in Carson.

"Mostly, what you learn is from a lot of the other women," she points out. "And everybody's trying to find out where you can get help. We were really blessed to wind up here at Good Shepherd's Mother-Child Residence."

Safe and Secure
Program director Sister Joan Mary Moore hears that a lot from women who wind up staying at the transitional residence on average from eight to 14 months. They tell her that the Mother-Child Residence is way different from other shelters and even long-care facilities they've lived in since becoming homeless.

The Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary sister has heard all the horror stories, including one mother's tale of staying at a mission and one time turning around just as somebody was walking off with her baby.

"Here," she tells a visitor on the front porch, "they feel very safe and secure."

And because of the small size of the residence, which can accommodate nine families with a total of about 21 kids, families become very close, which Sister Moore says creates a "wonderful" home-like feeling. Women often look after each other's children, so babies and toddlers eagerly go into any mother's arms.

She also reports, however, that many homeless women are severely damaged when they arrive at the residence.

"Mostly it's their low self-esteem," she says. "They blame themselves for what others have done to them or let happen to them. And even when they're not consciously doing it, they are subconsciously doing it. So there's lots of depression, and that's why we have individual counseling every week.

"We hope to be able to get them from homelessness to self-sufficiency and to feel good about themselves - and also not to blame themselves for being homeless," she notes. "Sometimes when they blame themselves, what they do is overcompensate their children and try to get them whatever they ask for, even though they can't afford it."

Children, too, are harmed by their homelessness, according to Sister Moore. What can be especially hurtful is when other kids at their new school find out and tease them. "That's why it's nice here," she says. "Because mostly the children don't know that they're homeless. Because they're not. This is their home."

But homeless mothers and children are basically the same as everybody else, she stresses, just "down on their luck."

Good Shepherd's Mother-Child Residence offers many support services besides separate counseling for women and children.

Adults are given case and financial management assistance, parenting, health and life skills classes, along with job training for those who need it. Moreover, assistance with childcare is provided while mothers attend training, school or are working.

Children receive help from L.A. Works, The Young Professionals and other volunteer groups with tutoring, arts-and-crafts and recreational activities. They also are given donated clothing, toys and books. While families live in private rooms, they share home-cooked meals.

As with other Southland shelters and transitional facilities that accept women and children, there is usually a waiting list at the Mother-Child Residence.

"With the housing crisis and everything, I think it probably is growing," says Sister Moore. "And that's terrible. I mean, it's inhumane for our society to allow this - homeless mothers with children - to be happening. We could take better care of our people, and not let them fall through the cracks."

The hardest thing
That's what Kathleen Morgan says happened to her and Caitlin.

"We've been homeless for three years now, and I just kind of slipped through the cracks, you know," she says. "I don't want to raise my daughter in shelters. Some people call those mothers 'shelter rats.' They choose to go from shelter to shelter to shelter. I don't want to do that. It's not something I'm doing on purpose."

The outgoing mom calls her daughter a real trooper, who has weathered their homeless odyssey with no permanent scars. Even when she was ridiculed by a couple of girls at an old school about wearing the same clothes "all the time," she took that in stride and continued to get good grades.

But Kathleen hopes that Caitlin doesn't blame her for their present plight and also leaving her dad. "I just didn't want her to be sitting on a powder keg, especially coming up to adolescence," she explains about kicking her abusive partner out.

"I think what is the hardest thing about being homeless is the lack of stability for my daughter," she explains. "That's the biggest thing. If it was just me, I could say I've been blessed so much and that there's a reason for this. But I think for my daughter, the lack of stability and not knowing where we're going to be is just so difficult.

"It's terrifying to find yourself homeless. It is absolutely terrifying. But imagine what your kids are going through. At least in my case my daughter is with me. That's the most important thing, and I think it is for most kids. As long as they know they're loved and they're with the person who loves them and will protect them, they're OK no matter where they are. Kids are pretty resilient. I know mine is."

Caitlin says it has been hard moving from shelter to shelter and, especially, from school to school. And living on skid row was downright scary, witnessing up close people talking to themselves and others screaming out their pain. But the weirdest thing she ever saw was a woman in the middle of the street who took off all her clothes and just sat down.

"It's hard going to different schools because all the friends I've made, like, I lose them," the 11-year-old observes. "And then I miss all the good teachers and stuff. You just get used to one teacher and then you have another.

"But this is the best shelter that we've lived in," she adds, her eyes brightening. "Because they're nice to everybody, and they have everything that we need. For Christmas and birthdays, they give us presents. And the counseling helps me to get everything out that I'm upset about. So they take very good care of us."

Kathleen likes it here, too. From the minute she walked inside the Mother-Child Residence last November, she felt a sense of peace - as if God was in the walls. It's a feeling she desperately hopes will continue for herself and Caitlin.

"I want to get an apartment in a fairly decent neighborhood, hopefully one where she can have her own room," the single-mom says. "I just want peace in our lives. You know, I just want some stability for us. We really don't need a lot. Just a place where she's happy, and it's close to a good school."