Recently our Centre Manager (Abbie) and Rehoming Manager (Sandra) were lucky enough to be awarded a bursary to attend a week long course at Battersea Cats & Dogs Home in London. This was a unique opportunity to see first hand how one of the UK’s largest rescues operates. As well as a fantastic chance to network with the other participants, from six other rescues from all over the UK.
The comprehensive programme covered a host of areas including;
- The specific problems in our catchment areas and how this impacts on animal welfare, the environment and society in general.
- Using Shelter Metrics to ascertain the best occupancy rates, an important factor for any rescue. This involves looking at occupancy, length of stay and departure rate.
- Discussing and working to an ethical framework, decision making process and rationale for decision making.
- Identifying opportunities to improve our daily routines and rehoming practices.
- Identifying changes we want to make and creating a sustainable plan for change.
Our staff felt the course to an amazing chance to look in detail at GRW’s practices and have been able to identify areas that they would like to change to streamline processes, enhance daily life for the dogs in our care, ensure continuity of record keeping and build new partnership working relationships. We are pleased to announce the we now have a partnership agreement with Battersea and will be supporting them by having a mature male greyhound transferred into our care.
We would like to thank Battersea for their time, knowledge, advice and generous hospitality to our staff.