Wendy Till

Photo courtesy of Wendy Till

Wendy Till is leading the development of Australia's first educational program for social workers specializing in the veterinary realm. Till, a graduate of a veterinary social work program in the United States, is pictured with her family pet, Harriet.

Early efforts are underway to establish veterinary social work as a distinct vocation in Australia and the United Kingdom, potentially bringing increased global recognition to a role that has been gaining traction gradually in North America.

In Australia, a charity has secured government funding to develop a pilot educational program for social workers who would like to specialize in the veterinary or animal care sectors. In the U.K., at least two large veterinary employers are considering hiring social workers amid the emergence of a training course there that covers topics relevant to the field.

Social work in general involves helping people deal with hardship by providing counseling, networking and other services. Veterinary social workers concentrate on needs related to the human-animal bond. They could help veterinarians handle workplace stress, for instance, or pet owners deal with the loss of a beloved animal.

Veterinary and Community Care (VaCC), a charity based in Perth, Western Australia, is developing a program for animal-care-focused social workers that will be the first of its kind in Australia.

Wendy Till, a social worker and the program's lead developer, emphasizes that the pilot will have only five students. The charity hopes the pilot will provide a blueprint for educational institutions such as universities or registered training organizations to develop programs of their own.

Supported by AU$280,000 (US$184,000) in state government funding, VaCC is seeking expressions of interest from prospective students with undergraduate qualifications in social work, with training planned to be completed toward the end of 2026. The program, free to the students selected for the pilot, will have theoretical and practical elements, the latter involving placements in partner veterinary clinics. Once the students graduate, the partner practices will keep them on for six months as part-time employees, paid from the government grant.

"It'll be a win-win," Till said. "They'll get some paid practical experience, and the vet teams will get the benefits of having a specialized social worker around."

Because the term "veterinary" is legally protected in Australia, graduates of the pilot program will have the title One Welfare social worker. (One Welfare, like One Health, denotes the concept that humans, other animals and the environment are interconnected.)

History of veterinary social work

Although veterinary social work may seem novel, social workers have been interacting with veterinary teams for decades in the United States. A longtimer in the field, Susan Cohen, landed a job in 1982 providing counseling to veterinarians and pet owners at the nonprofit Animal Medical Center in New York City. She's since watched the field grow as more people recognize its value.

"There's a lot of awareness now that pet loss is hard on people," Cohen said. "And in the last eight to 10 years, people have become aware that veterinarians are under tremendous stress."

The term "veterinary social worker" is believed to have been coined in 2002 by Elizabeth Strand, founder of the Veterinary Social Work program at the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine in Knoxville (UTK).

About a decade later, in 2013, UTK launched a combined program comprising a postgraduate certificate in veterinary social work and a Master of Science in Social Work. In 2018, it introduced a Veterinary Human Support certificate for animal health professionals. The programs today are part of UTK's Center for Veterinary Social Work, a partnership of the veterinary and social work schools formed in 2023 by Strand and now led by another social worker, Pamela Linden.

Under the center's definition, veterinary social work has four key components. One encompasses helping animal health workers deal with workplace mental health stressors like conflicts with clients. Another involves helping animal owners deal with grief. A third concerns animal-assisted interactions — for example, working with therapy dogs. The fourth focuses on the link between violence to animals and violence to humans.

Demand for UTK's combined master's and postgraduate certificate program has been steady since about 2017, with an average of 12 students graduating each year, according to Linden. (For perspective, each Master of Science in Social Work class has about 200 students.)

Around 300 participants have enrolled in the postgraduate certificate and 100 in the Veterinary Human Support certificate programs since their respective launches. "Our students are our best promoters: Enrollment has been steadily increasing as word has spread," Linden said of the latter two programs. "This is largely driven by increasing job opportunities for social workers trained in veterinary social work."

Still, whether the discipline is taking off as a career pathway is hard to say definitively, according to Linden's colleague and the center's associate director, Bethanie Poe.

"On one hand, we know that the field is growing. There are more jobs than ever before specifically for veterinary social workers, and some of the large veterinary corporations are making a point to include them in their practice models," Poe said. "On the other hand, we still encounter a lot of people in the veterinary profession, as well as in social work, who have never heard of veterinary social work, so we still have a long way to go."

Taking the model overseas

Besides the UTK program, which is considered the epicenter of the veterinary social work world, similar programs exist at the University of Pennsylvania (a combined Master of Social Work and doctor of veterinary medicine) and the University of Denver (a certificate in Human-Animal-Environment Interactions in Social Work). The latter has been available since 2004, and the school has offered courses in human-animal interaction in social work since the 1990s, according to Nina Ekholm Fry, an adjunct professor there.

Internationally, the field appears to have been largely confined to the U.S. and Canada, where the University of Guelph and the University of Saskatchewan, for instance, provide veterinary social work services to the public from their respective veterinary schools.

Across the Atlantic, moves to establish veterinary social workers in the U.K. are being championed by Rebecca Stephens, an associate professor in social work at the University of Sussex.

"Trying to get a whole new specialism takes time ... but this has been received really well so far," she said.

Stephens, who completed UTK's postgraduate certificate, has spoken at conferences, at training events and to the U.K. Parliament about bringing the U.S. model to the country. With her assistance, a large veterinary specialist, referral and teaching hospital in England is investigating employing the U.K.’s first veterinary social worker.

She also has embarked on a PhD that will involve spending time at a large corporate chain's veterinary practices to determine how social workers or other human services professionals might best support them. (Stephens declined to name the employers she's working with because the initiatives are at an early stage.)

Stephens considered setting up a veterinary social work program in the U.K. until the Links Group, a charity focused on the connection between the abuse of animals and humans, started offering an online training course that covers topics relevant to the field. Stephens is a trustee of the charity and delivers a recorded preamble as part of the course. Still, she said she might consider setting up a separate program in the U.K., depending on her research findings.

Proponents cite breadth of job possibilities

Whether the establishment of training opportunities converts into reliable, well-paid jobs in Australia and the U.K. is an open question. From the U.S. experience, it seems that the role is valued, including by large practice chains such as BluePearl, a division of Mars Inc., and MedVet, both of which Linden says are not only hiring veterinary social workers, but ensuring they are getting education in the specialty. Linden said UTX graduates also work at veterinary schools.

"Others are in private practice, some using animal-assisted therapy as a therapeutic technique, while others focus on working with pet loss or veterinary professionals as clients," she said. "And others still are in more traditional social work settings, such as mental health clinics, assisted living and schools."

More broadly, Linden maintains that the role of companion animals in families long has been undervalued and ignored by most mental health providers. "We are learning how important it is to explore individual, family, community and organizational impacts of human-animal interactions," she said. "Animal health-related organizations have been slow to acknowledge the importance of self-care for people who care for animals."

Dr. Robyn Whitaker, one of VaCC's four veterinarian co-founders, gives a host of reasons why she believes veterinary social workers are worthy of investment.

"[They] can bring this whole new mindset to the veterinary profession and introduce ... concepts like boundary setting and debriefing," she said. "If you've embedded a veterinary social worker in your practice, which would be the ultimate goal, or at least have the services available, you're going to be an employer of choice."

Veterinary social workers also can help practices retain clients, she added, by linking animal owners to support services and funding avenues such as government support for people with disabilities. Further, they can help practices offer a broader spectrum of care based on their clients' individual financial circumstances.

Till, also a UTK alumnus, says veterinary social workers are well-versed in performing psychosocial assessments of families to gauge the impact of factors like housing stress and connect them to agencies that can help. "If there's family domestic violence, we know pathways there for support," she said.

Cohen, the long-time social worker in New York, is optimistic that the continued establishment of dedicated educational pathways will help the field expand worldwide and counter lingering skepticism about its value.

"There are people who are still twitchy about the idea of any kind of mental health support," she allowed. "I've seen them say, 'If I knew that a veterinarian ever had mental health support, I wouldn't hire them.' That's old-fashioned, but that's what you're dealing with.

"So I think that as the field has grown, having training available means that you're not only graduating people who know what they're doing but, for those more skeptical people, hearing that someone is trained or has a certificate is comforting to them."