Are your behavior staff working remotely? Have them pilot a Behavior Helpline!

A recent ASPCA webinar, Behavior Helpline – Toss your Community a Lifeline in the COVID-19 Era, had great ideas about how your behavior staff can help foster care providers and new adopters with a behavior hotline. Tiffany Shao, CCPDT-KA, behavior and training manager at the Humane Society of Western Montana, discussed the benefits, logistics, and other considerations.

Benefits

The Behavior Helpline is a service that can be run completely from home.
It can help reduce returns (foster and adopter) while you are trying keep in-shelter staffing low to improve social distancing.
Suggestions can help mitigate frustrations of individuals looking to surrender their pet for a basic behavior issue during the pandemic
- You are providing a solution, not a barrier, by offering options.
- You may be able to change the situation and help keep the animal in the home.
Establishing this system while your workload is lower will allow you time to work out the details of the program and catch up on training resources.
Having this resource will greatly help your community.

Logistics

Personnel: Designate a person to coordinate the behavior hotline and give them a team to support it. Encourage your staff to seek ongoing training. Much is available on-line. This may be an opportunity for a staff member with some training and experience to further develop their talents. Or consider a person who has the desire to grow their knowledge of animal behavior and may wish to work toward certification.

Ensure a Code of Ethics/Professionalism: It is important that consistent messaging is being provided; this can be improved by having team members round on cases together through remote conferencing platforms about cases and share resources, information, and strategies. A collaborative approach also mitigates liability if client attempts a strategy your team wouldn’t recommend.
Communication systems: Consider a dedicated cellphone vs. an email address vs. a Google Voice number. Ensure you have a means for internal communication should an inquiry be forwarded from another department.

Data Tracking and Case Management

Good record keeping that is accessible to everyone on the team is essential; e.g. Google Sheets, Pet Point, or another shelter software program are all options for tracking cases.

Maintain as a log/behavior record to avoid potential for miscommunication and redundancy as your team communications with clients.
Records should include client and animal information, issues, recommendations and recheck phone calls and share with the team for feedback and oversight.
Keep track of the inquiries you receive as a means to identify your community’s biggest behavior challenges. This will help you focus your resources, offer targeted continuing education to your community, or help identify important counseling points for new adopters.

Don’t actually have the time/staffing to pilot a program like this and then continue it? Consider partnering with a local trainer. It is a great way for them to build a client base for their private lessons or training classes in the future. Just make sure you have investigated that they use humane training techniques and that their training philosophy aligns with the mission of your organization.

Want more information? Check out the recording here (available next week):

https://www.aspcapro.org/webinar/2020-04-22-120000/behavior-helpline-toss-your-community-lifeline-covid-19-era

Check out some of the resources Ms. Shao shared during the lecture to help you develop your program’s resource library: