At BARCS, our fostering program has always been a robust initiative serving as a lifeline for nearly 2,000 animals per year. Up until the 2020 pandemic, the program prioritized foster placement for animals who were underage, had long-term medical needs, or otherwise were not thriving in the shelter environment. When the pandemic hit, we had to vastly expand our foster placement of healthy and adoptable animals. Doing this allowed us to maintain our lifesaving outcomes by continuing adoptions outside of our shelter walls with minimal human-to-human contact, and refocusing our sheltering efforts on emergency and specialized cases that need immediate care within our facility. We gained hundreds of new foster families and a large foster-on-deck list who are at the ready to help us ease the number of animals coming into the shelter.
Cabot Animal Support Services
We are so excited to grow our foster program. We have developed a sleep over and field trip (Adventure Tails) portion which has been really well accepted and has recently resulted in the adoption of pets in our care. We look forward to growing this program and others as we understand the needs of our community and companion animals.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Care & Control
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Care & Control has fully embraced #theHASSlife! We have incorporated a focus on keeping pets and people together in all aspects of our work and in the words of Gina Knepp are "focusing on both ends of the leash." We have created a special Field Operations Unit focused on providing additional community support as needed, enhanced our Foster program through the use of a Trello Board that fosters can use to communicate and committee to pets (thanks Pima Animal Care Center for the design), and as of 10/2/2020 we have received our clinic license through the North Carolina Veterinary Medical Board to expand/enhance the medical treatment available to at risk members of our community.
Cincinnati Animal CARE Humane Society
There are a lot of big changes happening at Cincinnati Animal CARE as we enter our second month of operations. The last couple weeks have seen a big push into the community. We're partnering with local food pantries to provide a "one stop shop" for the community to pick up free pet food in addition to the human food they're receiving. We've also started heading out into communities with high surrender and stray rates to let them know that we are here to help. We're hoping that by building these relationships now, we'll be a resource families know they can turn to in the future.
City of El Paso Animal Services
In September, El Paso Animal Services expanded the new ‘Stronger Together’ program which provides services and support to our community. For the first time ever, El Paso Animal Services teamed up with El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank (the largest food bank in the region that serves 24 million meals a year) to offer pet food at their food bank distribution site. We also hosted numerous events that targeted areas of town that have been underserved and haven’t had the access to many of our programs and services. In September, EPAS assisted 1,060 community pets with 10,459 pounds of pet pantry food, 874 microchips and 338 vaccinations.
El Paso Animal Services also presented the 2020 Fiscal Year report to City Council, which showed the success of the new Community & Pet Support program (created on some of the foundations of HASS), how much our community has supported our lifesaving efforts, and how EPAS is transforming from the traditional brick and mortar shelter system to a community wide resource aiming at supporting the human-animal bond.
Dallas Animal Services
This month, Dallas Animal Services (DAS) is continuing to focus on providing resources to pet owners in need. DAS will be distributing physical copies of our Pet Resource Guide, which lists helpful resources for those who are facing hard times due to the COVID-19 pandemic. DAS is also working to create more awareness of the many lost pet resources we offer, including text support and independent apps, through social media and a press release to local media.
Denver Animal Protection
No updates yet, check back soon.
Fresno Humane Animal Services
Fresno Humane's response to the Creek Fire was a crash course in HASS element implementation! Out temporary evacuation shelter required partnerships for sharing the load, telehealth to monitor the sick/injured on site, case management to insure the best care for the array of pets, volunteers to assist with daily care, remote tech help to respond to public requests for field assistance, public safety and animal protection for the ultimate goal of GETTING PETS BACK HOME & KEEPING FAMILIES TOGETHER.
Greenville County Animal Care
Greenville is a pet friendly town and it's no surprise that people are embracing the idea of foster-centric sheltering. Ollie had been running lose on a busy Greenville street with an obvious injury. A group of neighbors were trying to get him to safety when our good Samaritan, Jim, was bitten. After clearing it with DHEC, Jim was able to keep the dog at home through both the DHEC and stray holds. Long story short - Ollie, now Sid, was adopted by first time dog owner Jim. As a side note - Jim committed to paying for surgery to repair the broken femur. When presented the vet bill - he was surprised to find his neighbors had chipped in and the majority of the bill had been paid. We couldn't be happier with this outcome.
Guilford County Animal Services
GCAS has partnered with Meals on Wheels to develop a pet food/supplies program. Last month we delivered over 800 lbs of supplies to homebound seniors, and in October we have already added five (5) additional seniors with multiple pets. We have also signed a lease at a local church, today, and are establishing a pet resource office in a local community to help with food, supplies, spay/neuter and humane education.
Humane Rescue Alliance
During the three month period of June, July, and August our volunteers and fosters have continued to play a critical role at Humane Rescue Alliance (HRA). Our volunteer department has collaborated across the organization to create over 65 new specialized volunteer roles in eight different departments helping support the mission of HRA. For the same time period, our foster team placed 1,043 animals into foster homes compared with 477 animals for this same time period last year. Additionally, in August, HRA's HOPE (Help Out, Partner and Engage) Program designed and distributed a questionnaire to seven apartment complexes in Washington, DC in an attempt to better understand residents' animal-related needs, points of conflicts between residents and management, and to support the creation and distribution of resources and services in community-based events.
KC Pet Project
KC Pet Project has been focusing heavily on pet retention and intake diversion practices and programs.
Over the last several months we have been strategizing and planning a Pet Helpline which will launch in the next coming weeks as a fully functioning call center and pet support center. Pet Support Operators will triage each call they receive and provide resources, information, or services (including supported re-homing) to obtain the best outcome for the individual pet and pet family in question.
To best determine the true needs of the Kansas City community, our organization recently held our first Community Collaboration discussion with other animal welfare stakeholders in our community to determine what each organization’s mission and purpose is, how each organization is currently supporting the needs of the community, as well as how each organization can support one another to address unmet needs. This was the first of many discussions to come and we hope to have a transparent and clear understanding of what next steps should be taken in supportive programming for pet families.
In direct response to a record-breaking influx in intake, KC Pet Project has began to implement several pet retention and community partnership programs including but not limited to, Emergency Boarding, a primarily foster-based initiative that will assist with temporary boarding for up to 30 days, a Pet Care Assistance Program that will use private donations and grants to subsidize care for animals in extraordinary return-to-owner situations driven by financial insecurity, and a Veteran-Animal Placement Program to provide access to animal adoption for veterans in transitional housing. Other initiatives being explored by KC Pet Project include pet-friendly housing and a prep-academy for animal care to create vocational opportunities for our community to join the animal welfare industry.
LifeLine Animal Project
At LifeLine Animal Project, we have developed our Community Programs teams at both locations, in order to support our current programs like Friendly Finders, while creating others like our Animal Advocate and Lost and Found initiatives to increase our RTOs. We've also started building partnerships with local boarding facilities, and have assisted with a few temporary housing situations so people would not have to give up their pet. Thankfully since we've been able to keep our shelter population low since COVID started (with the help of our growing foster program, we've been able to maintain at least 50% of the animals in our care living in foster homes), we've also been able to focus on behavior programs to improve the lives of in-shelter dogs with behavioral challenges, as well as take our shelter clinic team out into our local underserved communities to provide access to vet care for people and pets who would otherwise not be able to see a vet.
Los Angeles Animal Services
Los Angeles Animal Services launched Home To Home this past week. We are excited to include this program in our resources for owners to help reduce intake and increase lifesaving.
Michigan Humane
We have moved from appointment only to open adoption lobbies to allow for easier access to available animals. Our Pets For Life team is actively providing 2-1-1 resources to families who have pets under our care. We are close to establishing a compassion foster program for patients going into the University of Michigan Hospital. Their research dept. is working with us on this project.
Oakland Animal Services
Oakland Animal Services is getting ready to launch a monthly pop up outreach clinic at homeless shelter sites in Oakland. We have be doing exams, vaccinations, microchips, pet food, and supplies. We will also be offering spay and neuter services at our shelter and other medical surgeries that might be needed.
Palm Valley Animal Society
HASS has truly been transformative for PVAS. Since our involvement, individual team members participating in the working groups have not only gained knowledge in best practices and appreciated all of the support they have received from other participants, but they have begun to think differently about the impact we can have and all we can accomplish in our community.
We have held two pet food pantries for the community and are resuming vaccine clinics for the public on October 10th. We are revamping our Foster and Volunteer programs to be more proactive and build better relationships with those who participate.
Pima Animal Care Center
Pima is currently working on a Spooktacular Halloween microchip drive for Oct 31st. Not only will we be microchipping pets but also handing out pet food, pet supplies, and human supplies.
Our intake to placement program sent out an incredible number of animals for the month of September. 188 animals to be exact with a average length of stay of 3.1 days.
San Diego Humane Society
San Diego Humane Society successfully launched our adoption ambassador program and 7 animals were adopted the within the first few days, directly from foster!
San Diego Humane Society is piloting a program with rideshare app Uber to help pet owners and their animals with transportation needs.
Through partnerships with local veterinary offices, San Diego Humane Society have soft-launched a spay/neuter voucher program to help more pet owners in our communities access important services.
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