18/09/2023
Can you help?
💔💔Something we never thought we would have to say💔💔
We are struggling. Individually, as a Team and as a Charity
We currently have
🐾24 dogs we are actively looking for homes for
🐾4 in rehab which will need homes very soon (otherwise the thousands we have spent on them will have been in vain)
🐾30 YES THIRTY dogs on our waiting list with a possible 10 more surrenders forms incoming
We recruited a few months back for more case workers and had an amazing response and some fabulous new team members, However due to various reasons which have ranged from health and personal situations to case workers not being able to cope with the emotional aspect of rescue or dedicate enough time, our team is still struggling to clear the backlog of dogs that people need our help with.
You may have seen in the news that it’s not just us - ALL RESCUES are struggling, however the team we currently have are stretching themselves so thinly that we feel it is not manageable anymore, and not fair on the people needing our help or on our adopters and fosterers. Along with loosing new members, 2 of our old school team are having to take time off due to health and personal reasons and we have 2 more due to have operations in the next month. We are all trying our best to dedicate as much time as we can but we also all have our own jobs, families, dogs and lives that we juggle along with this work.
On top of making contact with owners and potential new homes, our case workers also, on a daily basis deal with messages from previous adopters - this can just be an lovely update to a behaviour or medical problem that requires dealing with. We have a HUGE amount of lifetime medical dogs on our books and as we offer lifetime support this can be almost like a full time job. The more time you are on the team the more amazing adopters we keep in touch with - but this all takes a toll.
So we have made the decision to take the following steps immediately and for the foreseeable future:
1. We can only accept emergency medical surrenders - even then we can not guarantee we can help in a few hours like we were able to before.
2. We will stop adding dogs to our website and publishing on Facebook until they have a case worker able to deal with the messages straight away as we are finding that by the time a dog is allocated a case worker, everyone who has shown interest has already adopted elsewhere. We introduced this system to help us but we misjudged peoples patience with us.
3. Once our waiting list is down to 5 we will reopen it again - this will still mean a delay on working on new cases but hopefully not as long as the 6-8 weeks we are currently quoting.
The only solution going forward once we clear the backlog is to have a huge team of caseworkers so we are once again recruiting … However before you apply we would ask you to honestly ask yourself the following 2 questions:
1. Do you actually have enough time to be a case worker? Does your current job and daily life allow for it? Case work is not 9 - 5 or 5 - 9 - it’s pretty much 24/7 365. Im currently typing this at 23.05 at night… If you value early nights and a set in stone pattern to your day then its not for you. Could you take a call, or respond to an adopter who’s panicking during your normal day? Could you put down everything and jump on a team call (or join in whilst cooking dinner?) to discuss something urgent? Could you liase with vets and organise the emergency treatment of a dog, and put everything else you had planned for that day aside?
2. Can you handle the emotional aspect of rescue? A lot of the time this isn’t horrid abuse cases (thank goodness) - although those are hard enough… Its speaking to owners who are at their absolute lowest and have no where else to turn. I have cried along with many of them, however I also know that I can dust myself down, pick myself up and think of the positives that we are helping someone through one of the hardest things they have ever had to face - rehoming their dog.
If your answer to the above is no then we commend your honesty. A lot of people would love to help out but casework is too full on for them. There are other ways you can help us and we appreciate anything that anyone does to spread the word, fundraise for us or generally support the work we do.
If your answer is yes then please drop us an email to [email protected]. Recruiting and then training new people is obviously an added pressure for the team so please do bear with us once we receive your application - we will be fitting this in around trying to clear our backlog of dogs needing new homes.
We only have one pair of hands each, so we hope that by adding a lot of new members to our team, that many hands will make light work for everyone
