Sign Connecticut Banking Emergency Contact Form Myself

Industry sign banking connecticut emergency contact form myself

hello and welcome everyone uh thank you so much for attending this is uh the session changing the narrative that pets are a barrier to housing uh part of our 18th annual train in student conference i'm uh ryan beach i'm the development and marketing program manager here at cch um this is a wonderful panel so happy to have everyone here we were given a really unique opportunity from petsmart charities to establish a an emergency assistance fund uh for uh households and families uh with pets so we have some some great experts here today um who we will talk to about uh some of the specifics of the program but also you know the the sort of bigger um bigger point about why keeping families and pets together is is so important uh as many of you know the the theme of this year's conference is house and equals justice and we feel that this um this session really really exemplifies that in a different way um you know oftentimes people they look at a pet or an animal and think that that's not a deserving um need for a for a household especially a household of someone experiencing homelessness that has you know uh other such pressing needs but you know we obviously feel completely opposite and that um keeping these these households together is is incredibly important and you know has so much uh so much impact on the success of housing going forward and and so much emotional trauma potential um in separating those households so we're really pleased to present this panel here today uh we hope you're enjoying the conference so far um it seems to be very well attended and we've heard lots and lots of great things so you know please feel free to use our hashtag our social media here to spread the word uh we have three more days left uh including you know we have this panel left today as well as our happy hour following um uh and i have some more details about that later but uh pets are encouraged at all happy hours but especially today's and at this panel as well as we're all moving from home uh and a huge thank you again to our presenting sponsors for the conference bank of america and zillow and to petsmart charities who not only is uh funding this wonderful program but has also made this panel possible and we are really viewing this this panel here today as the launch of this emergency assistance program uh very quickly i will go over so just uh who our speakers are today kelly balthazar of smart charities garrett parsons of the interfaith hospitality network of greater cincinnati and theresa geary uh who is incorrectly labeled as youth action hub but is actually the connecticut humane society um and will be one of our partners here um as we move forward with this program in the coming years so with that i am going to turn it over to kelly uh who will give a brief introduction about petsmart charities and uh thank you so much oh yeah hi all really really excited to be here with you so i am kelly balthazor i'm the regional relationship manager for petsmart charities which means i oversee the grant making for owned pets programs for all states east of the mississippi and i'm fairly old in this business so i've got about 20 years experience in corporate philanthropy and social responsibility and grant making and i started my career in fundraising and non-profits so to date we actually just got all these numbers together i've either raised or given away about 120 million dollars in my career so i'm very very excited about that it's going to be on my tombstone um i'm a proud parent to two human boys and right now four rescues having just gotten a brand new one this weekend so i've got a 17 year old rat terrier named hobbs a six and a half year old one and a half year eared chihuahua mix cooper is our newest ball of anxiety you might be seeing him today on video because he likes to sit on my lap and he's a mini aussie pomeranian mix and then kona is our whack-a-doodle she's a three-year-old ball of fluff that's absolutely crazy um full disclosure all of them are in the office with me so if the amazon guy shows up you're going to hear them so i wanted to give you all a real quick overview of petsmart charities so petsmart is our corporate sponsor and since the beginning of petsmart in 1996 our founders of petsmart have chosen never to sell dogs or cats in their pet stores that was pretty unheard of at the time but jim and janice doherty recognized really early on the challenges with pet homelessness and overpopulation so to address those challenges they actually created a separate and independent 501c3 which is petsmart charities and petsmart charities of canada we just celebrated our 25th anniversary last year um and to date we've awarded over 400 million dollars in grants we've had a four-star charity rating from charity navigator for the last 17 years and we remain in the top one percent of all charities ranked on charity navigator so if you are a donor to petsmart charities you've probably made that contribution through the register at the petsmart stores and it's a great fundraising model every year about 30 million people give a dollar 52 at that register and that's what helps us create our program so if you are a donor thank you so much we we really truly appreciate it and those 25 years and 400 million dollars granted with partnerships of about 4 000 animal welfare organizations have really allowed us to look at you know the incredible impact we've made and also look at our mission and make sure that we're adapting to the changing times pet overpopulation especially for those of you who are in connecticut has has shown in the last you know 10 years or so to being solved through consistent spay and neuter programs and animal shelters are turning more into community resources rather than just what we used to know as the pound they're really becoming great organizations and so we at petsmart charities realized that we needed to to look at pets as still part of vulnerable families and also adapt as pets began moving from the backyard and into the bedroom so we determined we needed to evolve and look at supporting the whole family which humans are included in our definition of that whole family so next slide so that created this impetus of us creating our grant portfolio for preserving families and it really began with us understanding this issue and helping those organizations that we work with understand how pets can can not necessarily create barriers or impediments but actually can be sometimes great resources to help humans get those services that they need and one of the biggest challenges we have in this area is addressing the the thought process that many often have that people shouldn't have pets if they can't afford them and that pets are luxury items um but we don't believe that pets should be seen as another challenge to a family budget because having a pet isn't necessarily an affordability issue but that's often where folks start at so to give you a little context to this challenge there are an estimated 29 million pets that live with families that are currently receiving snap benefits this is information that is easily available from multiple sources to understand kind of how many pets might be living in in challenging situations with families but if you add to that the working poor maybe an alice index program um to really understand there's probably millions and more that are being affected and especially if you look at the pandemic and what the pandemic has challenged that is becoming even more profound as people are losing income or have less income because of the challenges we've had with the pandemic and that it's just changed and we all understand so now we don't think anyone should argue that they can't have a can't have a pet if they can't afford it but the truth of the matter is that circumstances change like the pandemic you may have had a pet before and circumstances changed and now you're having challenges you know making your rent or getting food for your family but you still dearly love your pet and we all also understand that poverty is cylindrical so we can't ever make those broad sweeping generalizations about any type of pet family and then time and time again science has shown that pets provide much needed companionship and support they can increase the health benefits to people they build resiliency in families and they can offer that unconditional love and support that so many people going through crisis situations need so why would we ever deny a family that is going through challenging time the opportunity to maintain that human animal bond and make measurable advantageous impact to both that peace person and the pet and then finally just looking at the finance side if these pets aren't kept with their families they're going to enter their own shelter system and teresa will talk about that soon so collectively we as taxpayers we as members of the community are going to be supporting these homeless pets anyway and there's a larger cost associated with the cost of pet sheltering just like there's a cost involved with human sheltering so if you're looking at a 250 pet deposit and maybe a hundred dollars worth of shots that solves the issue and the kids in that family get to keep their eight-year-old you know 90 pound mud why wouldn't we want to support that um why wouldn't we do that when the cost of sheltering that animal may be in excess of a thousand dollars and that's if you can find a home for that animal so when we started this preserving families program we realized we can't help pets of families in crisis without working with the human component of that crisis because you all are the experts in that case management animal shelters have done what they call pet retention programs for about the last eight to ten years or so but often those programs are only focused on what the pets needed without understanding what the humans needed as well so that's where we expanded our focus of preserving families and discovered these major learnings that we determined that family is defined as a minimum of one person and one pet that it really is that familial unit of where you find your comfort your impact and your support and that you've got to look at that this is a whole health one health focus that supporting the human while supporting the pets are are critical from our point of view and then the flip side supporting those pets while supporting the humans are also critical because that bond can actually help people move out of crisis and keep pets from going into crisis and that that class collaboration is key that the industries can't do this alone the human welfare organizations are going to need the animal welfare organizations and the animal welfare organizations are going to need to work with the human organizations to really truly understand what services the entire family needs to get them out of crisis and that the success of this particular program is based on those human outcomes because the animal can't be successful unless the human is successful so we are really looking at how you can keep these families together and what we need to do to support the humans keep their pets in order to help them and that's why i'm here today that's why we decided to do these programs with the two great organizations you're going to be hearing from today and really really excited to to hear from all of you as we kick this off so turning it over to you all wonderful thank you so much kelly and we are you know obviously incredibly appreciative here um as an organization and you know a lot of our audience will be the people that will be doing the case management that uh you know can then help their clients with these funds so um you know you're gonna really see the direct impact uh from this and with that i wanna turn it over to garrett parsons uh from the interfaith network interfaith hospitality network of greater cincinnati a fellow ohioan um who has a really wonderful program we garrett is a uh is another recipient of the petsmart charities grants or their organization so um has a really wonderful program and it may be really relevant to a lot of our audience out here so with that here i will turn it over to you awesome thank you so much ryan and thank you to cch we're really excited to be here um so my name is garrett parsons i work here in cincinnati at interfaith hospitality network of greater cincinnati um i am our pet program coordinator um so i'll go into what our pet program does but real quick ihn we are an emergency homeless shelter for families that are experiencing homelessness in the greater cincinnati area um we're one of the smaller shelters in the area um and we've been here since 1991. um our pet program um is a really unique exciting program what we do is we work with pet owners that are without housing in greater cincinnati um so our program offers temporary shelter to families experiencing homelessness in cincinnati we hold on to these animals until they are able to get reunited with their owners once they secure pet friendly permanent housing the alternative to our program is what happens all over the country pet owners find themselves without housing they don't have many options and they have to surrender their pets pets that they may have had for one year five years ten years you name it um they have to surrender their family members so that's why our program exists um we're working at about preventing 100 animals over 100 animals a year from entering animal shelters we've recently expanded i'll talk about that later but i want to give everyone a little bit of a historically kind of what happened because we didn't just go from being a family homeless shelter to being able to keep all of these animals on site to prevent owners from having to surrender them so what we did it happened really nicely over time and it started informally um so we work with families without housing we would have families enter our building that had cats that had dogs that didn't want to get rid of them um that would sometimes not enter a shelter because they have a pet um or might have to go through the traumatic loss of of surrendering a pet in order to enter a shelter um we had families say don't make me tell my child that we had to get that we have to get rid of our dog and these dogs or these cats could be like siblings to these children and daughters and sons to these mothers and fathers um so it kind of came really naturally that we wanted to be able to prevent these families from getting rid of their pet so it was very informal at first we would keep dogs and cats in our offices and i wasn't here at the time so i can only imagine what that was like but we would keep these animals with us on site the families would care for them to the best of their abilities and once they found housing they'd get their animal back or they'd go into housing with their animal i should say um there was a petsmart grant that we learned about that wood what it would do was install kennels in our basement area in our storage area so we jumped at that our executive director stacy burge jumped at this grant we got it we installed four dog kennels and four cat kennels downstairs so that families coming into our building excuse me could keep their dog or their cat safely on site not just in an office but in a kennel where the family could go downstairs care for that animal and then go into housing with their pet once they secured that uh once we got these kennels calls just started coming in from all of the other homeless shelters and social service agencies in the area um and even some animal welfare organizations um so we saw how much of a need there was to offer this service and expand what we were doing to offer it to more people in cincinnati um so um stacey burge our executive director looked into grant funding to hire someone to run this program so that's when i got on board um i just graduated from university of cincinnati with my bachelor's of social work i became a licensed licensed social worker shortly after and i actually had my internship here my senior year so i knew about this pet program was super excited that they were going to hire someone to run the program started out being part-time so i jumped at that i got hired and the the purpose was to expand the program so once i started we established a volunteer base to be able to care for these animals so that we didn't have volunteers beforehand and we made our program available to all of the homeless shelters in cincinnati northern kentucky um even outside of our county here in hamilton county um so we started to quickly fill up um and we maintained that for um we've been running for four i've been here for four years now i just had my four-year-old work anniversary um so we have been able to help hundreds of animals every year cats and dogs we've had bearded dragons we've had turtles we've had rabbits we've had um we worked with ferrets so really more than just dogs and cats but any pet we kind of consider family um so we've been doing that for four years we have a really solid volunteer base and the reason we're doing all of this is because our families were coming to us and saying these are our family members so as good social workers we know that our families they have a right to define their own definition of what their family is and they also have a right to self-determination so um we have been respecting that and we're going to continue to do so we actually thanks to petsmart charities have been able to renovate our facilities to double our capacity um so instead of being able to have 20 animals on site for 20 pet owners that are in the community will be able to have close to 50 on site and hopefully keep 300 pets with their owners and out of animal shelters per year we also have an amazing foster program and these are fosters that take animals into their own homes and care for them until their pet owners secure pet friendly housing so we in addition to running the small animal shelter as a social worker it really helps to work with our families help make referrals if they're not established with if they don't have some sort of relationship with the social service agency help them navigate housing help them navigate pet friendly housing since that's even harder to come by because affordable housing is already hard to come by in addition to all of these facilities that we have in the foster program and being able to keep pets on site um we have been expanding constantly so in addition to working with pets whose owners are homeless we've been able to work with pets whose owners are in crisis in general we saw that there was a need to house pets whose owners might be going into the hospital and had a small support system they had nowhere for their pet to go or pet owners that had to go into a rehabilitation program we've even started the conversation of working with pets whose owners are incarcerated we actually just got a call yesterday about that so we've really been trying to do everything that we can to keep pets with their people to keep families together and to help pet owners that are in crisis um so our main goal is to prevent trauma that these families would have to go through by surrendering their pets and keep pets out of animal shelters so we kind of have two goals here and then i'll kind of finish by expanding we've started to expand a bit more we're on a coalition called safe so that stands for saving animals from eviction we're on the coalition with our county animal shelter cincinnati care which is just two months old we had a change of hands in the county animal shelter and then two city spay neuter clinics um for cats and for for dogs and cats um so our coalition saving animals from eviction is to work with pet owners um before they're in crisis um maybe they're on the verge of crisis maybe they would end up having to surrender their pet one day but it's really just pet owners in need um so we help with pet deposits we help with behavior modifications supplies pet food um we are actually just like connecticut is a second recipient of this emergency grant due to the economic impact of covid to work with pet owners that are in need of our assistance um so we've been able to have a referral system set up with our social service agencies and our animal welfare organizations to kind of come together um and work with pet owners who might be in need of our funds we've already had um referrals come in from our food banks uh and then from other social service agencies and our spay neuter clinics and our county animal shelter so we've started to to really help pet owners who are in crisis who need our help who need this kind of emergency assistance um because they're pet owners um there's a lot that we want to do here in cincinnati and i really hope that connecticut kind of gets to do some similar work at some point um and this workshop is a really awesome opportunity and start to start that conversation um i think in um to end i'll i'll touch again on why we're doing it and why it's important for kind of the everyday social worker um so i know that's a lot of the audience here in this workshop is we respect our families um their right to self-determination like i said before and their right to define themselves so if we are working with families that have these dogs have these cats these bearded dragons or rabbits or whatever it may be if they say that these pets are family members then it's our responsibility i mean per our code of ethics to respect that and see what we can do to to preserve that bond and keep that family together um so what we've done here in cincinnati is pretty unique and i think there's a lot of different ways our communities all over the country can can work on this and preserve this bond um we're really excited to do it and we're excited to be here so thanks so much wonderful garrett thank you so much yes uh gare and i spoke on the phone a couple of times kelly connected us and it's been really fascinating to learn about um their program and i know we have a few programs here in connecticut that have um similar not quite nearly to the level and you know i'm hoping that we actually might have some of those those folks in the audience who can you can speak to that a little bit um or can ask some sort of specific questions because there is um you know it's it's a relatively new idea uh it is my understanding so um you know i think that we will see that across the board uh and speaking of our partners here in connecticut uh i want to turn it over to theresa geary of the connecticut humane society um teresa and the humane society is going to be working very closely with us um on some of the uh specifics of this program as people have needs for their pets um you know we really want to uh work closely with the humane society to offer some of those needs so uh teresa with that i will turn over to you and i have your slides as well thank you ryan [Music] so we are also very excited to be working with cceh in this program um you can switch slides please so a little bit about connecticut humane society we have three locations across the state of connecticut we offer pets render services surrender prevention pet adoption services euthanasia services a very good sized pet food pantry and offer community pet wellness clinics all over the state um certainly we have full service animal shelters we're here to support our community whether we are adding a family member to them or they need to separate one and we also the wellness clinics are invaluable to folks who don't have access to veterinary care next slide please along with our three shelters we also have a loafy veterinary clinic our fox memorial clinic which is located in newington and the fox often times the clinic is these are the last stop for folks they don't have anywhere else to go they don't have a lot of financial resources and they don't want to separate from their pet and so it is our job to work with them to figure out what finances they do have access to and what they what that pet needs to be able to keep it in that home we see a little bit more than 5 000 clients each year with more than one pet in each of their their families and it is meaningful to them to not have to separate or make that really difficult decision um we've heard it all from kelly and from gareth that this is really about keeping pets and families together and and not judging with what resources they do or don't have removing all of our own personal judgment and just saying we're going to keep this family and this pet together and help them which is how we when we started talking about this partnership with cceh next slide please is really the whole goal here is working together to help pets and families stay together um connecticut humane society is set up to do that we do that already however we can reach far more people in our communities with the partnership with cceh and keep those folks in those families as kelly said one pet one person doesn't matter the number they're keep it intact um they don't need to come into a sheltering system as kelly said in here at connecticut humane it can cost us upwards of 900 to re-home an animal from start to finish and that money is better spent um keeping that family and that pad together and it's stressful and hurtful to all of the people involved when they are separated our goal here in this new partnership thanks to pet park charities is providing medical care to pet owners in need um providing guidance to cceh and their network to ensure that those families get the care and services that they need that they don't even know exists and referring science to cceh when our first point of contact is the connecticut humane society it is not uncommon for people to drive up toward and we'll now call because of coven but certainly drive up and say i'm living in my car with my cats i'm about to be homeless and i need to surrender them and now we have a resource to direct them to so we can hit this problem from a couple of different angles and it is it is an amazing opportunity in the state of connecticut we look forward to modeling cincinnati in a lot of ways and look forward to learning from them and we won't have to stumble our way through it because we have a partner so again this is such an important issue in our state it's an important issue in our country but here we're going to be able to tackle it head on and we'll absolutely have great success so again thank you so much for the opportunity to be able to work with these families wonderful thank you so much theresa and yes i i completely echo those sentiments um there is um as we sort of put together this this uh project there was a lot of fact finding too and and sort of reaching out to a lot of these new partners and learning uh you know what was going on and you know one of the coolest things was sort of this idea of um humane society is looking to do more you know human service work and we're looking to do more pet service work so you couldn't couldn't find a a better um better partnership uh and so with that um i also want to invite up and everyone uh everyone on the panel if you'd like to turn cameras and and cameras back on we'll keep our mute etiquette on but uh i also want to just uh announce that um from cch here we have amber freeman um as well as dave gonzalez rice two members of our our pets task force uh who have been instrumental as we um you know really craft this program going forward um so i i think with that i we really like to open up to the audience we've got a couple of questions coming in uh so please use that q a function uh you know we are really viewing today as the sort of official launch of of this program this will be a flexible emergency assistance program like some other programs cch has so you know we encourage you to ask kind of specific questions about that as well as you know please to to ask to our partners here um you know sort of the work they do and um you know how uh there's uh other uh potential partnerships that could come out of this which i think as we all know as a coalition uh you know partnerships or make the work we do very possible so uh with that uh let's see we have here this is actually this is actually a great question that our very first question so this is to garrett um who handles your veterinary care since you have a shelter in house who handles your veterinary care yeah that's a really good question um so we have really good partnerships with our spay neuter clinics who also do wellness they can handle vaccinations we have a relationship with a local veterinarian who offers discounts to us um so really what we do is i handle transportation we have plenty of grant funding to help pay for these vaccinations help pay for the spay neuter surgeries um any additional medical needs which of course they arise all the time um whether something happens on-site or some sort of pre-existing condition um we didn't start out with that grant funding we our partners the spay neuter clinics they had grant funding to help us out so for the first year or two and and some still are helping us at no cost to us um and then we've started to slowly be able to pay for it on our own we don't hold we don't um ask the pet owners to pay for it even though they they try an offer i can i add something to that just real quick so um oftentimes folks will not understand they'll say well it's just a spay and neuter clinic this dog maybe needs his ear infection fixed i would still reach out to those clinics because those are still you know veterinarians that have that capacity to do and while they may not offer all the services to their public customers they may be willing to take on your clients as a separate section um because those veterinarians often have to keep up those skills rather than just doing just wellness and spay neuter so it's always good to have those conversations not only with spay and neuter clinics but your local maybe humane or society or spcas to see if there might be a possibility that they might want to work with your very specific population on things and to speak a little bit about how it will that will function here i mean this is a truly flexible assistance fund so um you know when those veterinary costs are what we look at as a barrier to housing especially when it you know is is a diversion or a rapid exit um that's that's exactly what we're establishing this fund to do so when those minor costs especially if you've got someone saying i won't take a pet that's not spayed or neutered you know we'll be able to um assist with that uh you know thanks to this so um perfect uh back to we actually yes back to we uh uh this is a good question um someone asked you know does this exist in connecticut and you know this is exactly what we're implementing here but to build off of that um i think that another piece of this that we didn't really touch on here is uh talking about people with pets who are unsheltered uh and especially when uh pets actually not only serve as a barrier to housing but sometimes serve as a barrier to coming into the system at all and uh david uh i'd like to just kind of hear you touch on that a little bit and teresa maybe offer some of your expertise i know that that's something we discussed a lot um was having those folks who you're maybe their first point of contact because they're worried about their pet or they won't come into our service system because they don't want to be separated and how we could possibly see this program um really resolving those issues thanks ryan so um to elise's question i um the intention is for this project to go uh statewide uh we've been in touch with your can coordinator already about what that referral process will look like so so watch for nitty gritty details very soon um and uh you know i work out in that part of connecticut uh uh and uh live out that way and so had in mind um this scenario that i encountered when i was coordinating the eastern can uh when ryan and i and others on the team at cch were talking about program design so um thankfully in in the way that this grant is structured uh we have the freedom to uh offer a number of different kinds of allowable costs which could include anything from a pet deposit related to moving into a unit to kenneling and boarding fees if that's you know a real necessity to bring uh be able to bring somebody into shelter uh for an animal that's you know um a pet and is not a service or emotional support animal with those kinds of um uh uh reasonabl accommodations at issues so uh veterinary costs as well so you know i think you'll find when we uh get the literature out to describe the the program uh we're really encouraging you all to think creatively help us kind of build the model and the case for this kind of service uh and um uh you know look forward to hearing from the cans you know we expect you'll find a lot of these uh households in need of this service at the front door between two on one and the can appointments uh or rather you know from a two-on-one referral to the can appointment uh yeah but we also know that the housing solutions meetings or in some cans there's a a homeless outreach team meeting uh case conference these kinds of scenarios or there's a person uh you know living with an animal in a vehicle uh and it has to date been uh you know especially difficult to resolve so um hope that this is really helpful for exactly that kind of scenario as well perfect thank you david that's that's great and then yeah teresa i know we had talked about this a little bit um you know i just do are you able to maybe share an experience or two of where you've had you know this is something that came up on our conversations where you've had people who are you know possibly you know we would probably define as chronically homeless who are are really coming to you first um as a point of contact into the system because they're so concerned about their pets i mean that's something that you've experienced yeah right right now what we're i think we've seen it on the shelter side the surrender side right where people are coming because they don't know what else to do with the pet because they don't have any place to live and they don't want the pet to be subjected to living in a car or on the streets and i think what's fascinating about what we're learning through this process is we don't ask enough questions about people we ask a lot of questions about pets right and so we we get to know fluffy and fluffy's needs and what fluffy likes to eat and how fluffy plays but we don't ask about their family dynamic in a way that talks about how the pet is fitting into that and how that's working for them and so i foresee both on the veterinary clinic side the fox memorial clinic side and our shelter side our staff are going to be learning from your team about how to ask the people questions so that we can figure out who these folks are where they are in our community and get them the services that they need to keep that pet with them and get them off the streets if in fact that's how that is going to work for them and they they are actively wanting to pursue that so i think this this goes far beyond a little bit of veterinary care and keeping a pet with a family it's by it's looking to find who these folks are where they are and getting them all of the services they need and not just the pet side or the people side but i i'm we're so excited about closing this loop right closing the loop of the whole family and not leaving a part of it left on the table and then not getting all the services for everybody in the family so it is an eye-opening experience for connecticut humane society and we are ready to dig in excellence excellence um this is interesting and kelly i i'm hoping you can maybe speak to this on um on a national level and uh maybe uh my my panelists here have some more expertise than i do um you know this is someone who's located a transitional home for veterans struggling with homelessness and they're asking um what they can do to advocate uh for the residents that have pets an effective way so you know um i know transitional housing a little bit different a little bit outside of our shelter but in that case um what can people who are in any type of of homelessness assistance program what can they be doing um to really sort of uh you know make sure at kind of a bigger level that um these kind of protections are in place and kelly i think again you may be able to speak to this in in some of the other grantee programs that are out there that are maybe addressing things from this way sure i guess i would ask who are you trying to advocate to because what are what are you trying to receive for these families so are you trying to make sure that when they move into transitional housing that the transitional housing has pet-friendly facilities um and then certainly you can look at the emotional support animal designation for the for those pets um and then also it's a little bit about you know working with those housing authorities to show how pets actually increase the ability for people to move through the system um and that those studies are now being done so that there is the ability and kind of the carrot opportunity to you can keep your pet you can keep them here we're going to keep you supported that they are then able to receive the services that they need within a transitional housing facility to then move into permanent housing afterwards so if it one of it is really making sure you're understanding the information that's out there about the human animal bond and there is a great resource for that called habri and it's called the human animal bond institute h a b r i um and they have some great research on habri about pet friendly housing about human animal bond science so you can utilize all of those opportunities to to create your your elevator speech as you're talking to those people you have to advocate for on behalf of your clients to either change policies or systems thank you ryan good job i'm going to drop that in the chat as well i'm also going to follow up um something that we have looked at that uh i know that uh many people on this panel have been involved in is the um the guidance from the national alliance and homelessness which has also put together a really wonderful uh kind of case study about this kind of thing which faced a lot of our work so i'm dropping both of those in the chat um that's wonderful uh very helpful um this is bound to come up uh with covid we have seen a major uptick in pet adoptions which i think we all know which is great news uh but i suppose the you know concerning side of that is that you know what we know is possibly looming around the corner and something we've talked about a lot here at this conference and we'll continue to talk about is you know with eviction moratoria ending and you know the potential economic fallout of covid um you know that obviously could lead to also a greater risk of uh animal surrender and evictions job loss etc now teresa this is maybe to you and probably garrett are you starting to see that or are we still kind of not quite there yet or do you feel that uptick coming around the corner here um i we have not seen enough taken surrenders um related especially not adoptions you know the ones we've done and we did a fair number as well as everybody else did around the country but i suspect and this is anecdotal but i suspect we're seeing a relationship with a pet differently since covet i think covet has changed a lot of people's perspectives and about those relationships and how important they really are because i think pets kept and are continuing to keep people in a good mental space while they're at home and isolated so i think the relationships are going to look a little different we will certainly keep an eye on that because there's always a concern of surrender but that's also where we put the surrender prevention things into place so if it is pet food that you need you can be on our pet food pantry service for up to two years if that's what it takes to get you back and stable so that that money can go to other things that you need um so those are the programs we'll continue to move through again our class memorial clinic if the animal has a medical condition we will try and work with those folks um to achieve the outcome of a positive you know resolution of that medical problem without costing them um money we have very generous donors to the connecticut you may decide you help us operate and and that is how we work with the folks that come to us in greatest need so an eye on it but it's not been happening yet that's encouraging garrett any i mean from the the midwest yeah i'll add on so um i second to what teresa was saying about that relationship and how that's probably changed a lot um in a lot of communities um i'll start by it was super interesting to notice that as soon as the pandemic started things were shutting down um we had no calls people were not asking for our services which told me people were probably not getting evicted nearly as much um that helped us out a lot because that's when we decided to do our renovations thanks to thanks to our grant funding so there was a quiet period it was loud downstairs when they were doing construction but our phones were silent um but it has been picking back up um these the past month or so we have been getting more calls i can't speak to our county's surrender rates uh or reasons for surrender because i don't have that information right yet um but we have been getting more calls probably the same as we were getting before the pandemic so i wouldn't say uh we're having more of indeed due to covid um but then again we've also had a lot of pet owners call needing assistance why we have this petsmart charities grant um for the emergency assistance in the first place um so it seems to be changing a little bit and that's just the people that know about our program so we're still getting the word out you know we've been here five years we're still getting the word out so hopefully that answered the question and i would say nationally we're not seeing it from any of our partners yet um there's kind of a scared expectation we might in the future um i think the bigger challenge right now is the fact that a lot of veterinary clinics were shut down because of kobit so there's backlog to a lot of things and whether it's spay and neuter or just even plain old medical and so some animals who may have had conditions that could have been helped earlier are now getting helped later and they may be more expensive at this point which may put a further burden on those that are economically challenged but what we have seen is that just like connecticut humane a lot of these shelters are moving into what they call the haas model which is the human animal supportive services model where they are really trying to look at that whole issue and not just the pet as teresa was saying um and there's a couple other questions about this is have you seen people how many people don't reclaim their pets when they um when they go into these types of programs and it really for the most part from what i've seen and garrett can talk about it it's really rare in good programs and the good programs is making sure that the human organization is talking to the animal organization because the crisis of the human has to be resolved in order for that family to come together so if you are only as a municipal shelter working with that animal you are only holding on to the animal you're not helping resolve the humans crisis and the human is what has to bring the family together so garrett i would say less than 10 percent don't reclaim animals and that's sort of nationally what i'm hearing from everybody it's around there and of course every year is different we'll have a slightly different statistic but um the thing is what we've also been tracking is why are these animals not being returned to their owner and very rarely do owners just not come back um it happens unfortunately but it's very rare um really the main reason if they don't get to go back to their owner is because the owner either found out that they uh they got into housing that they don't did not allow pets and there's no way around that these are families that might have children and they have to decide do i stay homeless longer to find a place for the whole family or do i get into housing so that's a terrible trauma that these families have to go through and then um sometimes these families they have so much going on they've endured so much trauma um they know that if they're not able to reclaim their pet we can find a home for them they kind of know that right off the bat just in case um so they they utilize that um but yeah like kelly said it is rare fortunately yeah that was actually that was my next question good kelly's taking over my job is not as excellent that's a uh yeah we've had a couple of questions about that because i do think that that's obviously a big concern now to sort of speak further i mean it is rare but what are your procedures and then i can actually maybe even answer a little bit of we maybe have some plans for for some of that here and obviously the humane society would be our partner in that that if that were to occur that you know that you have some more potentially permanent facilities for true surrender of animals but here what do you do when that happens um so it's different case by case um i have had plenty of volunteers and co-workers adopt our animals that needed homes um and they're still with them great homes um but we also have a partnership with um different rescues in the community fortunately we've never had to um move an animal into our county shelter they're already overburdened as it is with animals so we utilize our smaller rescues to find homes for the animals so i can say confidently that 100 of our animals have either ended up with their owner or adopted after a short stand with a rescue um or in kind of a weird period of time middle middle ground ryan i'll add to that i also think it's important not to just assume surrender isn't going to happen because i think in some cases part of the question the case workers are going to be asking is is the pet safe in the home are the people safe with that pet right is that relationship healthy for all of them um and i think we are going to see some that that relationship is not healthy anymore for what what one reason or another and that animal needs to be re-homed and there's nothing wrong with that that's why the surrender service exists where we can keep a healthy relationship together that's the other side of it and and they're both important because an unhealthy relationship in the family whether with your pet or your family member can be very stressful and devastating and that that doesn't exclude a relationship with a pet excellent i can also speak a little bit to um sort of on that line as well as this kind of ties in with i guess this is actually a little bit the other side i know there was a question earlier about if um someone needed a temporary kennel stay or a temporary say which is very similar to sort of your program we don't have a lot of programs like that here and i i can speak to the the program that we're establishing would actually allow for that as long as it's part of a comprehensive housing plan so as long as that really includes you know um an exit strategy you know we don't want to we don't want to sort of open up a long-term stay you know we want to make sure that that's a true um we're moving a barrier to housing not just you know sort of uh extending a state of homelessness but um that is something that we we've really talked about here and we're working out some of the specifics um and actually before the session ends i definitely um we'll have amber discuss a little bit about um some more of these specifics and the actual training for this for people in the room who might be interested in that but we do have a couple more questions this one in particular i think is is really fascinating um are you seeing more and more landlords not allowing pets or specifically not allowing pets of a certain type i think we all you know think of the potential breeds that some people see as problematic um or you know maybe good news are we seeing more you know openness to animals uh and you know the the question asker garrett is specifically asking about about cincinnati but um uh you know across the board you know teresa and and kelly from the national perspective i'd love to see where do you think that's trending are people getting better or worse when we're talking about rental and pets uh i'll go quickly first um so i'm sure kelly will speak to um na ionally what it looks like because i know there are more pet-friendly cities than cincinnati when it comes to housing um but we have had a really hard time um with pet friendly landlords we um you know i don't have the data to prove it but i'm most likely i'm sure that um pet friendly housing is more you're more likely to find pet friendly housing um and more affluent housing housing that is not as affordable with affordable housing comes less pet friendliness i i would assume um we have worked on some big uh big scale projects about incentivizing landlords to become pet friendly we're trying to target landlords that are already semi-pet friendly maybe they allow cats and small dogs we want them to allow all pets we kind of um started using what the humane society talks about as pets are welcome becoming a paw paw property um so we wanted to incentivize landlords to do this talking about how pet owners that are in housing are more likely to stay in housing than non-pet owners and if you become a paw property you know we will help your tenants with access to vaccines behavior modification will even offer tnr uh to your condos or to your your apartment complexes if you have a community cap problem at your apartment complexes we'll go in and help with that population so we haven't had a whole lot of success because it is i think a long-term effort that we're working on um what we can do is start that conversation i think put more pressure putting more pressure on landlords is what we've been trying to do the more our community talks about the importance of pet-friendly housing um that shift is going to naturally happen and we'll probably have more initiatives and do more work in the future right now we're kind of just trying to do what our program is um but it's absolutely on our radar um because that's gonna that's gonna make our jobs a lot easier it's gonna make our family's lives a lot easier and and i'd say ryan's correct i think it's a cultural shift it's it's kind of um it's actually breaking down false narratives but we had to do the research to determine this was a false narrative so habri has that information for you that actually pet friendly housing their renters stay in that housing longer than the average renter and destruction done by pets is less costly than destruction done by children no offense to children but they've done that research so you can bring that up but it's really changing kind of the thoughts and ideas of what people have about pets and specifically about large breed pets or certain breeds i mean then you're working with kind of counties that may have breed restrictions as well but it's going to be a longer haul what i think is positive and ryan's done this a little bit too is when the insurance companies are getting behind this now so both allstate as well as state farm have done a lot of pet-friendly housing insurance policies both for large-scale landlord groups um but also individuals so that might be something that's helpful and could potentially be looked at can i pay the premium of your you know your insurance for your pet because they're usually pretty reasonable 20 bucks a month if that's what takes you to get into housing put it in the grant you know it those are the things that we're looking at too so don't try to reinvent the wheel get that stuff because with landlords you're going to have to come at it from a dollar point of view this will make you money this will save you money that's great that's exactly right um i think that's exactly the way we thought about this whole program is right that'll make you money will save you money and obviously our audience i'm sure is aware of the uh the difficulty of landlord education um in in many cases and this is probably you know another one because it's maybe feels easier to say no but also you know um this is great to see this uh we'll definitely distribute this information around afterwards um this is sort of backed up by scientific data and and we're hoping that this program here has that case study element to it in fact that's that's sort of built in this program is not only do we see this as an opportunity to you know have emergency assistance funds available we really want to view this as an opportunity to show how much positive impact a pet specific emergency assistance fund can have um you know it'll it'll function a lot like the structures of our existing uh be homeful funds or anything we've sort of um we've done around covid with those kind of one-time emergency assistance um uh you know costs for families that are right at the front door their shelter or for rapid exits and actually uh you know as we kind of approach our last couple of minutes here i i don't want to lose this opportunity so amber i i'd love to if you don't mind um we we actually have a training set for the first round of this as we get everyone trained and actually start getting these funds out the door so amber if possible if you'd like to talk for just a few minutes about um just kind of what that train looks like and and uh what are what our plans are sure so we want to continue this conversation now that we put it out there what the program's about we want to continue it and give more information about the ins and outs of the program so there will be a training on october 13th at 12 o'clock um that information has gone out in our cceh training newsletters that sent out but if you have not received it and you're interested in being a part of it you can feel free to email me at training cceh.org and i'll get it set up for you so you can attend but the training we're going to go over in more detail you know about the program how to access the funds as well as what will qualify for an appropriate fund um a form of assistance as we've already talked about you know the goal is to house someone without their pet being a barrier so if it takes um putting an animal and boarding or assisting with veterinary services or getting insurance because that's what the landlord is requiring we can assist with doing that um we also want to make sure that once of someone's house you know the pet is set up they have the necessary um the crate the food the leash that's required um anything to house someone and just keep them housed um but eventually you know we like to go a little step further and see how we can keep the animal house how we can keep the individual house so often someone has to decide um and choose you know are they gonna pay their rent or is their animal gonna eat so we also want to link individuals to different services and resources in the community to show what's out there so a part of this training teresa and her team at the connecticut humane society will be joining me to speak about all of the resources that's available how to access them but also we want to change the narrative you know we want to work with case managers and and say how to have different conversations instead of just simply saying you didn't give up your animal no instead we want to show them how to have these conversations where we want to keep the individual house and their their pet so in the future you will be seeing more trainings and where we're incorporating a pet component to shelter diversion because we don't just want to divert individuals from the shelter but we also want to take in consideration that they have a pet and make sure that they're safe as well and they have a home and the option is not just simply get rid of your pet so more to come with all of that but uh please join us for the training and as i said if you don't have the information you would like to join i can um get the information to you excellent thank you so much amber and yes um yeah you can either email us at info cch.org you can check out the website cch.org we've got um all of the trainings listed up there my contact information is r beach that's r b e a c h cceh.org if you have any other specific questions i can sort of guide them um i want to say a huge thank you to our panelists here today you were all fantastic really excited to have worked with you and and be working with you on this project going forward i don't see this as being you know an ending relationship anytime soon um go ahead and move on so thank you all so much uh for everyone that has uh participated in the conference thus far again three three days left uh we've been a little bit ambitious but it's going great so far uh and up next uh we have a happy hour uh you know byo whatever uh we have a little bit of a surprise i believe uh cchco richard show uh i believe is uh doing some trivia tonight and you know also feel free to bring your pets bring your animals um but thank you all so much for attending the session um you know as amber said more to come and really excited to get this money out in the field and really start making an impact on those households so with that again huge thank you to my panelists thank you all so very much and enjoy the rest of your day