Sunday 20 October 2024 (Online)
Book a place online now!
General admission (non-members): £65.71
SCAS members (become a member for £25): £33.22
SCAS student members (become a SCAS member £15): £16.96
Thank you to our sponsor, VetSkill, for their generous support of this conference.
About VetSkill:
VetSkill is an Ofqual and CCEA-approved awarding organisation and professional regulatory body. Our aim is to empower learners to achieve their full potential with inspirational qualifications. VetSkill has a growing portfolio of qualifications available for delivery and also offer end-point assessment services. We welcome enquiries from those who are interested in our services and supporting our mission.
KEYNOTE TALK: Palliative Care and the role of companion animals
Emeritus Professor Sam H Ahmedzai BSc(Hons) MBChB FRCP FFPMRCA
Sam is Emeritus Professor in the Medical School at University of Sheffield, with 30 years’ experience of being consultant physician in palliative medicine, covering both acute hospital and hospice.
His medical education and postgraduate training were completed at St Andrews University, Manchester University and in the Glasgow hospitals. His first consultant post was as medical director of the Leicestershire Hospice, and then he spent 20 years as Professor of Palliative medicine at the University of Sheffield, with an honorary consultant appointment at the Sheffield hospitals.
Sam’s early work on Animal Assisted Services at the Leicestershire Hospice in the 1980’s contributed to advancing the field, leading to a better understanding of the important role of companion animals in supporting people in residential care, hospitals and hospice. Through his involvement with the Society for Companion Animal Studies, (SCAS), he helped to set up the International Association of Human-Animal Interactions Organisations (IAHAIO) and became its inaugural president. He is currently Honorary Vice-President of SCAS.
His Sheffield academic clinical department had an active programme in care and research in cancer patients at all stage of illness from diagnosis to survivorship or end of life care. He retired from clinical practice in 2015 but continues his academic research, focusing on holistic assessment and care for people with chronic and life-limiting conditions.
His other research interests include – biology of pain; management of symptoms of cancer and arising from its treatment; quality of life assessment; improving supportive and end of life care services for cancer and chronic disease patients; advocating patient and public involvement in cancer research.
Presentation: The SCAS Code of Practice
Dr. Elizabeth Ormerod and Vangelis Diamantakos
Society for Companion Animal Studies (SCAS)
Animal Assisted Services (AAS) have operated in the UK for more than four decades. With growing awareness that many potential benefits can accrue from the presence of animals in health and social care facilities, and in educational establishments we are experiencing a rapid growth of programmes involving visiting and/or resident animals. Additionally, companies and professionals are increasingly offering AAS to clients at their own locations or in private practices. However, those implementing such programmes may not always fully understand the need for AAS to be meticulously planned utilising a transdisciplinary approach to ensure the safety of everyone involved and to safeguard animal welfare.
The SCAS Code of Practice was initially published in 2013 and revised in 2019. It serves as a guide for professionals, patients, and the public, outlining crucial steps to achieve best practices. The Code emphasizes the need for transdisciplinary collaboration across the caring professions – including veterinary medicine and ethology – for planning, developing, and maintaining programmes. And highlights the need to foster collaboration between practitioners and researchers to document outcomes. This collaborative approach enhances the effectiveness and sustainability of AAS programmes.
The SCAS Code of Practice is a living document and is being updated to incorporate current knowledge. At a SCAS workshop held during the recent ISAZ conference expert evidence was presented that will be incorporated into the revised document. These include the need for recognition, qualification, and registration in AAS; standards for animal selection/suitability and welfare; need for specific procedures in both human and animal training and assessment; safeguarding the needs of human participants in AAS.
Upon completion of the update, SCAS will seek a UK Consensus for Minimum Standards in Animal Assisted Services.
Workshop A: Emotional Support animals Workshop
This workshop delves into the therapeutic power of relationships with companion animals for humans living with chronic health/mental health conditions. In the United States, such animals – companion animals with no special training to assist their human guardians – are often referred to as “Emotional Support Animals” (ESAs). The policy and human rights contexts for people with ESAs in the United States will be briefly explicated
The notion of therapeutic will be considered in terms of how biopsychosocial benefits of human-animal interaction (HAI) and human-animal relationships (HAR) can ameliorate symptoms or impairment related to health/mental health conditions for humans. Peer-reviewed research on the biopsychosocial benefits of HAI and HAR will be briefly summarized, and participants will learn how to apply knowledge of these via an individual case study.
Finally, having a relationship with an ESA – that includes both strengths and stressors – will be compared and contrasted to evidence-based practices. Being able to maintain or build a relationship with an ESA for therapeutic support in rental housing where pets are prohibited is considered a disability accommodation for those who have the right to such under the U.S. Fair Housing Act. Too often, this accommodation is conflated with “evidence-based practice”, and subjected to standards and criteria for EBPs that other accommodation requests are not subjected to. The prevailing dichotomous viewpoints on ESAs, e.g., ESA-person relationships as a therapeutic support in the natural environmental, versus ESAs as interventions provided by clinicians as part of a treatment plan, will be considered.
Concluding the workshop will be consideration of how to supporting the ongoing person-ESA relationship, and a review of the types of human/animal support services that help keep people and their ESAS (as well as people with pets/companion animals) together and healthy!
Workshop B: Ethical Considerations in Animal Assistance
The burgeoning popularity of Animal Assisted Services offers recipients a number of benefits to health, well-being, cognitive functioning, relationships, and overcoming many life challenges. At the same time, a number of questionable practices have arisen, ranging from unqualified individuals offering services to the compromised welfare of the animals involved. This workshop looks at the types of compromises to animal and human well-being that can threaten the development of AAS, helps participants explore the quality issues involved, and identifies the skills and practices that programs can implement to ensure the highest standards for ethics and welfare. This covers training, assessment, interventions, and their impact on the animals as well as the human recipients of services. The workshop will emphasize the role of empathy – for clients as well as animals – and how to ensure that the needs of all participants in AAS are met. The distinct perspective of the animals will be explored with a series of videos and photos to raise awareness of how they are reacting to the work we ask them to do.
Workshop C: Innovations in Animal Assisted Services
Throughout history, dogs have fulfilled a range of different functions and more recently canine roles have grown to cover a range of medical support and disease detection tasks, with growing evidence of elevated levels of a ‘signature’ volatile organic compound (VOCs) associated with disease. Medical Detection Dogs (MDD), a leading charity, pioneers both medical assistance and disease detection and is committed to carrying out empirical research to improve operations, inform future medical technologies and improve the understanding of our relationship with dogs. As medical usage expands, it is imperative that the value of our dogs is objectively assessed, their potential capabilities are optimised, and these abilities are used to further understanding of disease diagnostics, canine-human interactions and human-canine bonding. Our Medical Alert Assistance Dogs use olfactory alerting ability for day-to-day support for people living with life threatening conditions. Historically, most of our dogs were trained to alert to blood sugar changes but increasingly we place dogs with individuals with Postural Tachycardia Syndrome (PoTS) and other cardiac conditions, non-epileptic attack disorder and Addison’s disease. Ongoing monitoring indicates high levels of alerting accuracy and highly intuitive behaviours demonstrated by the dogs in partnerships. In addition, MDD have worked on NHS approved clinical trials, exploring dogs’ ability to detect cancer, the malaria parasite, Parkinson’s disease, bacteria, and COVID-19. To better understand canine decision making, MDD works together with the Animal Computer Interaction Lab (Open University), using new technology which enhances the dog’s ability to communicate the degree of certainty when detecting disease from presented samples. This assists the interpretation of equivocal behaviours where the decision of the dog is unclear and gives the dog an interface to provide further information to the handler.
Workshop D: Cross disciplinary Collaboration
Prof. dr. Brinda India Jegatheesan
Summary: This workshop provides a detailed understanding on the importance and benefits of utilizing cross disciplinary collaboration in human- animal research and practice. It requires scholars and practitioners to move beyond being competent in one discipline in order to address a problem or a phenomenon that is unique or complex. The author will use examples from her cross disciplinary collaborative research and practice conducted in different parts of the world to showcase the benefits of the utilization of cross disciplinary collaboration in research and practice.
Presentation: How Integrated Animal and Nature-Based Activities Enhance Learning and Personal Transformation in a Residential Treatment Setting
Summary: A programmatic overview of how Green Chimneys School – a not-for profit residential treatment center and day school maintains and models a therapeutic milieu that incorporates animals, plants and nature-based activities. The presentation will introduce a brief history and theoretical foundation of the program and will examine detailed aspects of how animal assisted education and therapy, horticultural and nature-based programming are conceived, applied and evaluated by a diverse treatment team to support and enhance the educational, social, emotional and medical treatment of 200 children ages 5-18 who have been identified as having psychological, social emotional or behavioural special needs.
Poster Presentations
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2023 SCAS Conference
Missed the 2023 SCAS Conference ‘Are pets really good for us? The role of pets in mental and physical health?’
If you missed the conference, the recording is now available to purchase at a cost of £60 to non members and £30 to SCAS members. Email info@scas.org.uk.
Thank you to everyone who attended, and to our speakers and chair for making the event such a success.