Taking our Seat at the Human Services Table

Animal services are human services. While some pioneers have been approaching domestic animal welfare that way for years, it's only relatively recently that the broader sector has begun to approach our work from the perspective of the people impacted. We have an ever-increasing amount of research and data that connects human well-being to pets in the home. The human-animal bond is constantly featured in national media and trending on social media. The well-being of people and pets is inextricably linked and mainly driven by the human side.

Animal services organizations generally aren't very good at human services. There is no reason they should be. The century-old sheltering model evolved as an alternative to amateur mass culling, and for most of our history, quick euthanasia was considered the humane gold standard. Overall, we've come a long way since those days. However, we cannot forget that our organizations, methods, and status quo have been built on a foundation that was never intended to bear the burdens we now understand it must.

So, how do we wedge human services into a system that we are already Rube Goldberging to achieve basic lifesaving? In our world of finite resources, what do we give up to do so? As a small agency, I struggle to allocate staff and funds between our legacy sheltering operation and nascent people-focused programs. I firmly believe the best "solutions" are on the human-centered side. Still, my community cannot afford my organization to step back from sheltering, which consumes 85% of our resources. Not to mention, neither my staff nor I are human services professionals. We are not social workers, have not been educated or trained in mental health, and are not plugged into the broader social services network. While a handful of animal services organizations may have the resources and expertise to engage robustly with the social services model, the vast majority don't. Especially in smaller or disadvantaged communities. I am not saying it can't be done. Some are doing it well, but robustly integrating social services into their existing animal welfare organizations may not be feasible or practical for many.

I believe 100 percent in the social services model. I've spent countless hours implementing programs at my organization and supporting national initiatives promoting those programs. However, the animal welfare universe is tiny, and our resources are limited. Every new idea must compete for funding and attention from the handful of national animal welfare grantmakers. When those ideas are taken up, and resources reallocated, promising existing initiatives are stopped in their tracks, sometimes before the communities that need them even have a shot at them. There are simply not enough resources within the current animal welfare universe to sustain our current needs while also making the heavy lift into social services.

It is time to break out of our silo and sit at the human services table. This is imperative. We must redefine how the human services sector sees us and engage them as peers. We need to market our sector to human services funders (who are magnitudes of scale larger than our current funding base) and make our case as equals. Instead of cramming human services into animal shelters, we need to focus on integrating into the larger human services universe. This may mean utilizing specific-purpose organizations not burdened by sheltering obligations. We need to frame ourselves as vital to our communities because we are vital to our communities. This, of course, is easier said than done and is not a revolutionary idea on my part. Some people have worked hard on this for a while, but we need a broader push. There will be resistance and skepticism on both sides, but the data is clear, our work is as much about people as pets; it is time we were treated as such.