“It brightens people’s mood, helps alleviate stress levels and calms them down” – our canine befriending service story

As part of our canine befriending service, temperament-assessed dogs visit our inpatient wards with their owners to provide comfort to our service users.

Angela Barker works for the Trust as our befriending project and volunteer support co-ordinator. After volunteering with Pets as Therapy, she saw the immense benefits that spending time with dogs can bring to people, and was instrumental in bringing canine befriending to the Trust.

She explained: “I volunteered for Pets as Therapy one day a week. Demand for this rose dramatically and so back in 2019, we began to look at recruiting more canine befrienders. This needed to be commissioned, and I wrote up the documentation, including guidelines and risk assessment. A lot of research was needed to bring it to this stage, and the service was launched in 2020. We began our first cohort in June 2021.

“A canine befriender spends time with our service users on inpatient units. A unit gets one visit a week, and this can be in either a group or one to one session and lasts up to an hour.

“Seeing a canine befriender helps people with their social skills, it brightens their mood, helps alleviate stress levels and calms people down. It also helps with self esteem and builds confidence. People who do not normally engage with staff will engage with the dogs.

“The service users are very kind to the dogs; they bring them water and sit with them just stroking them. Some of the service users form very strong bonds with the dogs.

“We have a dedicated building for our canine befrienders called The Pad. The Pad came about through group sessions we held. We wanted a purpose-built building and through funding from Royal Canin, an international group, we managed to place a bid. There was a lot of interest from all over the world, so we weren’t sure we would get through, however we were successful in securing the bid. We were awarded the funding in December 2022 and the building was finished in October 2023.

“We hold drop-in sessions on a Tuesday/Thursday and Friday and a coffee morning on Wednesdays.

“In the future I would like to see us move more into the community in whatever way we can, so we can reach more people. I would also like to see the service promoted throughout the NHS and we are getting help with that. Canine befriending is a cost-effective way of running a service that promotes wellbeing and alleviates stress.”

Take a look at The Pad – the purpose-built building for our canine befrienders.