INNOVATE - Street Veterinary Program Helps Homeless With Pets

Elica Health Centers’ Wellness Without Walls program brings medical care to the homeless living on the streets, and in September of this year, they expanded the program to also include veterinary care.

(Elica Health Centers)

For the estimated 5-10% of homeless people owning pets - and up to 24% in some parts of the country - lack of transportation and cost prevents them from getting health care for their animals.

Dr. James Reynolds, recently retired from private practice, is Elica Health’s veterinarian on the streets of Sacramento, California.

While some may believe the homeless should not be able to have pets if they can’t care for them properly, studies have shown those with animals fare better than those without.

“They are loving companions to these people. They are their comfort, and their responsibility. They offer unconditional love. The bonds are very strong,” Reynolds told the Sacramento Bee.

In the first couple of months providing veterinary care, the pilot project has treated close to 200 animals suffering everything from wounds to fleas.

The goal of the program is not just to ensure the street pets are healthy.

Elica Health also hopes the program will increase the number of those willing to get help for themselves - hard to reach individuals may be more open to receiving assistance themselves when their pets are also being cared for.

Another aim is to improve the health outcomes of pets and people by preventing them from passing conditions between each other.

Elica’s team is also working to designate some of these pets as “emotional support animals,” which would make them eligible to accompany their owners into housing.

“Pets are an important part of the emotional health of these people,” Dr. Matthew Gibson, a family medicine and psychiatry specialist and medical director for Wellness Without Walls, told the Sacramento Bee. “In many instances, they will be starving themselves but make sure their animal is fed.”

The company believes the street veterinary program may be the first one of its kind in the country.

Read the entire story.

Sleep Bus: A Mobile Shelter for Homeless People and Their Pets

In just two months Australian entrepreneur Simon Rowe has raised over $100,000 to convert buses into mobile shelters for the homeless and their pets.

The goal of his non-profit organization, Sleep Bus, is to provide is a comfortable and safe place to sleep for the night.

Other organizations provide long-term solutions and counseling while Sleep Bus meets an immediate short-term need.

Sleep Bus statistics indicate there are over 105,000 homeless people in Australia. Over 6,000 of these people are sleeping rough on any given night, with 1,000 of those under 12 years old.

Rowe, who experienced homelessness at the age of 19, was inspired to found Sleep Bus when he saw a homeless man trying to sleep in a doorway in the middle of the day.  

“That man, trying to sleep on a concrete floor, in the middle of the day, on a busy city street affected me in a profound way. And that’s a mild story; for many sleeping on the streets are being subjected to terrible weather, harassment, bullying, being robbed and worse. No one should have to live like that,” wrote Rowe on his Go Fund Me page.

Each Sleep Bus costs about $50,000 to purchase and convert, and will feature 22 sleeping pods - similar to the Japanese capsule hotels - and eight kennels for pets.

Other features include:

• 2 toilets, 22 personal items lockers under bus storage
• Security system, lighting system inside & out
• Intercom system for family sleep pods with parental control locks
• Each sleep pod comes with single bed inner-spring mattress, pillows, sheets and blankets (washed daily)
• The pod has USB charging for mobile phones, personal light, lockable roller door, climate control and television with auxiliary channel running adverts for available services in the area to help with pathways out of homelessness
• Each pod can be adapted for families, with parents able to control their child’s door lock and intercom for communication between designated family members only.
  
  
   

RESEARCH - Homeless Youth With Pets Less Likely to be Depressed, Use Hard Drugs

Pets are proving to be a viable form of protection for street youth – a buffer against everything from loneliness to substance abuse.

And authors behind the research out of the University of Guelph's Ontario Veterinary College shows having a pet even sees high-risk youth three times less likely to suffer from depression.

Sadly, those same pets often pose a roadblock to services sorely needed by street youth who – when pushed – will choose caring for their companion over pursuing their own well-being, says lead author Michelle Lem.

Michelle Lem DVM, MSc

"These pets are their only friends, the only way they've experienced unconditional love without judgement. These pets have saved their lives in many cases," Lem says. "By asking them to give up their pets to access the shelter, what you're doing as a social service provider is saying, 'I don't understand your relationship' and often it pushes people away."

That can often see a youth pitched further into struggles on the streets – an unfortunate and avoidable plight according to authors of the report recently published in the journal Anthrozoos.

Lem hopes a little understanding goes a long way and that the findings encourage agencies to reconsider the role a pet plays for a youth and more importantly to accommodate them when they reach out for help.

"They can't access shelters, they can't access some addictions treatment, they can't go into hospitalization, so they (pets) are barriers to accessing services,” said Lem, director of Community Veterinary Outreach, a volunteer group that provides veterinary services to homeless people in cities like Toronto, Guelph and Ottawa. “What we're trying to show is, yeah, they are barriers, but they also have some very positive impacts."

The study focused on 198 street youth (in Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston and Hamilton) in homeless shelters and drop-in centres. Of those 100 did not have pets and 98 did.

Those without pets were three times more likely to suffer from depression and those with pets less inclined to engage in risky behaviours like hard drug use, according to the findings.

The flip-side, however, saw pet ownership, albeit offering physical and psychosocial benefits, as an impediment to a youth’s ability to access a shelter bed for the night, housing, employment opportunities and other crucial social services.

The findings are no surprise to veteran social worker, Michelle Peterson.

As a front-line worker with street youth for many years, she saw many cases where pets gave a troubled youth purpose – to protect and care for a vulnerable animal – and often reduced chances of them being involved in risky behaviour.

Owning a pet also allowed some to provide a living being with the kindness and compassion they were denied. That rat, cat or dog, for instance, might represent “family” for a vulnerable teen and satisfy the “intrinsic need to lavish love on something that loves you unconditionally,” Peterson says.

“A lot experienced poor care in their own families and there is something magical that happens when they are able to care about something, when they can do what they wish happened to themselves. Often they take better care of their pet than themselves.”

She says some teens would make a pet a priority – some opting to feed a pet before themselves – and how simply having responsibility of ownership helped them steer clear of trouble.

“They have to keep it together to take care of their pets,” she says. “The pets definitely come first.”

Peterson, too, hopes more agencies find ways to offer services to youth who come with extra four-legged baggage. “They already have barriers with poverty but then you throw animals in and it creates more challenges,” she says.

While health benefits of pet ownership have long been recognized in other studies involving seniors who live alone, for instance, this is the first to look at how the bond benefits street youth.

By Nadia Moharib

Nadia Moharib is an animal lover who has adopted everything from birds to hamsters, salamanders, rabbits, fish and felines. She has written about all-things-pets for years and was a long-time editor of a pet magazine in a daily newspaper which featured a Q & A column, Ask Whit, penned by her pooch (ghost written, of course.) The serial dog owner lives in Calgary, Alberta and most days can be found at a dog park picking up after her rescue pooch, Scoots.

Red Deer Food Bank and Alberta Animal Services Working Together

On June 9th Alberta Animal Services and the Red Deer Food Bank have joined Pets of the Homeless. Pets of the Homeless is a North American effort to provide donated pet food to locals that are unable to afford food for their pets. Millions of North Americans become homeless each years and numbers increase when the economy does poorly. Most homeless people are only without for a short period of time however it is more difficult for those with pets.

People may be forced to give up their pet or remain on the streets. Pets provide companionship and unconditional love. Approximately 25% of homeless and disadvantaged people have a pet. Pets of the Homeless supports the pets.

Pet food may be donated to Alberta Animal Services at 4640 61 Street Red Deer AB or at their Adoption Centre Located inside the Red Deer Petland. For more information call 403-347-2388. The disadvantaged can obtain assistance and pet food at the Red Deer Food Bank 7429 49 Ave, Red Deer, AB T4P 1N2 (403) 346-1505.