Module 7: Get to Know a Shelter
Is a New Normal Possible? The Human Animal Support Services Model
Not all developments during the pandemic were negative. The growing emphasis on fostering, low-barrier adoptions, self-rehoming, improved return-to-owner rates, and online marketing continue to help keep pets from needing to enter shelters in the first place and to speed their way to their best outcome if they are admitted.
I Video Chatted with a Cat and Now She’s Mine
By Marie Solis
“Should we Zoom?” I texted Valerie one Thursday evening, around 6 p.m.
“I think FaceTime works better,” she wrote back. “In case she’s on the move.”
A few minutes later, I answered my phone, and a small brown tabby cat appeared on the screen. After we exchanged hellos, Valerie, the cat’s foster mom, introduced the two of us: Ava was a playful and affectionate seven-month-old who didn’t get along with the resident cat in Valerie’s apartment. She had big, bright green eyes, a white smudge on the bridge of her nose, and a fluffy tail, like a raccoon. Read more . . .
Kristen Hassen, then director of Pima Animal Care Center in Tucson, Arizona, one the largest open-admission shelters in the country, observed that the pandemic forced an overnight transformation of animal sheltering from a focus on institutionalizing large numbers of animals in a central facility to helping keep families together and calling upon the community to open their homes to animals while permanent solutions could be identified.
“In considering what a different future for homeless pets might look like, we know that ultimately, we must de-institutionalize the work of caring for lost and temporarily homeless pets, create a distributed model of animal social services to serve pets in the neighborhoods where they live, with the ultimate goal of keeping the vast majority of pets home or very close to home. Serious thought and planning around implementing this model would have seemed insurmountable, if not impossible, prior to the emergence of COVID-19. The emergence of this disease, tragically spread through much of the world has profoundly disrupted life and the status quo for many institutions, including animal services.
Over the past five weeks, shelters have had to change their entire operating structures, at lightning speed, shelters have discarded many of the old systems, in an attempt to keep people safe. Shelters have done away with barriers to placement, punitive policies, and discontinued the use of available kennel space to house any pet for any reason. In just a few days, many shelters emptied their kennels, sent most pets to live in foster homes. In addition, they suspended all but the essential intake, embracing a new pilot model that slows or stops the constant flow of animals into the institution. They asked their communities to take collective responsibility for stray and homeless pets, holding pets in homes to avoid bringing them to the shelter. In this one moment, when so much uncertainty, sadness, and fear exists in the world, there is a glimmer of hope for what animal sheltering will be if we let go, once and for all, of the broken pound model.
The solution will require a new ethic for the care of companion animals in our communities. Learning lessons from human child welfare, education, social work, and human services, we will rebuild with the premise that animal services’ primary functions are to maintain, support, and strengthen the bonds between people and pets.”
Ms. Hassen now shares advice for shelter management via newsletters and blogs from her company Outcomes Consulting.
The “glimmer of hope for what animal sheltering will be” that Ms. Hassen called out in the first weeks of the pandemic led to the establishment of the national collaborative Human Animal Support Services (HASS) organization. HASS defined a vision for a decentralized community-centric sheltering method providing communities with social service-oriented and diversified support systems to help keep pets with their families and reduce the number of animals needing to be sheltered in the first place. This group envisioned an opportunity to change the model from an institutional approach that separates animals from their people, to a case-management approach that seeks to keep families together, blending the best of One Health, animal welfare, and human social services. HASS has developed a large library of shelter-based research, toolkits, playbooks, and other freely available resources for shelter use in pursuit of these goals.
Human Animal Support Services: The 10 Elements of the Animal Social Services Model
- The shelter provides emergency medical care and short term housing for animals with urgent needs.
- The public can reach the organization quickly and easily using remote technologies like text, phone, and web chats.
- Volunteers are engaged in every area of the organization, including field and outreach services.
- Telehealth services are available for animal caregivers considering surrender, and foster caregivers, and finders of animals who may be sick or injured.
- Animals that physically enter the shelter have outcome pathways identified before or at the time of intake, so the in-shelter length of stay is reduced drastically.
- The vast majority of pets are housed in foster homes, rather than shelter kennels, and most foster pets are adopted directly from foster homes.
- Animal caregivers can access pet support services, including housing, medical and behavioral support, as well as food and supplies, to help keep the human-animal family together.
- Animal services personnel operate as trained case managers, helping people keep their pets, providing resources and support to struggling pet owners, and assisting owners who need to re-home their animals.
- The organization operates a comprehensive loose pet reunification service to successfully send most roaming pets home without them having to enter the shelter system.
- Human social services agencies, rescue groups, and other community partners work closely with the animal services organization, recognizing people and their pets as a family unit.
