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Expanding Veterinary Social Work: How Social Work at WisCARES Community Veterinary Clinic Serves Low-Income and Homeless Pet Owners, Veterinary Staff, and Veterinary Students

Room C

Hybrid
1 CE Hour

Presented By

Description

Wisconsin Companion Animal Resources, Education, and Social Services (WisCARES) is an interdisciplinary program that aims to increase access to veterinary services for low-income and homeless pet owners, provide social services to the same clientele, and offer a unique learning environment for veterinary students. Veterinary social work in this setting involves three distinct client groups: clinic clients, clinic staff, and veterinary students. Attendees will learn about interventions for each group and have the opportunity to participate in a reflective writing and debriefing exercise. In the WisCARES curriculum, these are designed to encourage veterinary students to think, write, and talk about moral stress and healthy coping strategies. 

Target Audience
  • • Social Worker
  • • Counselor
  • • Marriage & Family Therapist
  • • Psychologist
  • • Veterinarian
Educational Goal

The educational goal of this workshop is for attendees to learn about veterinary social work in an access to care veterinary clinic.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this course, participants will be able to:

  • Define 3-4 points of WisCARES’ model of social work practice in an access-to-care veterinary clinic.

  • Explain how to incorporate social work into 4th year veterinary students’ clinical rotations.

  • Describe WisCARES’ foster and boarding program for companion animals of clients experiencing poverty and homelessness.

References

  • Browning, E. & Cruz, J. (2018). Reflective debriefing: A social work intervention addressing moral distress among ICU nurses. Journal of Social Work in End-of-Life Care. 14(1), 44-72. https://doi.org/10.1080/15524256.2018.1437588

  • Compitus, K. (2021). Crisis Intervention and the Human–Animal Bond. In: The Human-Animal Bond in Clinical Social Work Practice. Essential Clinical Social Work Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87783-5_6

  • Fawcett, A, and Mullan, S. (2018) Managing moral distress in practice. In Practice, 40 (34), 34-36. https://doi.org/10.1136/inp.j5124

  • Kerman, N., Lem, M., Witte, M., Kim, C., & Rhoades, H. (2020). A Multilevel Intervention Framework for Supporting People Experiencing Homelessness with Pets. Animals: an open access journal from MDPI, 10(10), 1869. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10101869

  • Loue, S. & Vincent, A. (2021). Directions in veterinary social work. Revista Românească pentru Educaţie Multidimensională. 13(4), 633-651. https://doi.org/10.18662/rrem/13.4/502

  • Ma, G. C., Ravulo, J., & McGeown, U. (2023). Emergency Animal Boarding: A Social Return on Investment. Animals : an open access journal from MDPI, 13(14), 2264. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13142264

  • Nolen, R. (2015). Searching for shelter: Veterinarians in Wisconsin fight homelessness while protecting the human animal bond. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 247(11), 1194-1224. https://doi.org/10.2460/javma.21.05.0249

  • Oosthuizen, K., Haase, B., Ravulo, J., Lomax, S., & Ma, G. (2023). The Role of Human-Animal Bonds for People Experiencing Crisis Situations. Animals: an open access journal from MDPI, 13(5), 941. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13050941

  • Williamson, V., Murphy, D., & Greenberg, N. (2023). Veterinary professionals' experiences of moral injury: A qualitative study. The Veterinary record, 192(2), e2181. https://doi.org/10.1002/vetr.2181

Social Worker

TPN.health, #1766, is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organizations, not individual courses, are approved as ACE providers. State and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for continuing education credit. TPN.health maintains responsibility for this course. ACE provider approval period: 03/31/2022 – 03/31/2025. Social workers completing this course receive 1 General continuing education credits.

TPN.health is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (Provider #1000101) to sponsor continuing education for LCSWs. TPN.health maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content. Course meets the qualifications for 1 hours of continuing education credit for LCSWs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.

Trusted Provider Network, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0654.

Counselor

TPN.health is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (Provider #1000101) to sponsor continuing education for LPCCs. TPN.health maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content. Course meets the qualifications for 1 hours of continuing education credit for LPCCs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.

Trusted Provider Network, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors. #MHC-0220.

TPN.health has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7267. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. TPN.health is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

Marriage & Family Therapist

TPN.health is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (Provider #1000101) to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs. TPN.health maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content. Course meets the qualifications for 1 hours of continuing education credit for LMFTs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.

Trusted Provider Network, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed marriage and family therapists #MFT-0097.

Psychologist

Trusted Provider Network is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Trusted Provider Network maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

TPN.health is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (Provider #1000101) to sponsor continuing education for LEPs. TPN.health maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content. Course meets the qualifications for 1 hours of continuing education credit for LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.

Trusted Provider Network, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0125.

Veterinarian

This program has been approved for 1 hours of continuing education credit in jurisdictions that recognize RACE approval.

CE Policy
This course is fiscally sponsored by International Association of Veterinary Social Work . There may be potential biases or conflicts of interest inherent to this relationship, and it must be disclosed to participants. These conflicts of interest have no bearing on the course content and have been resolved.
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Jennifer Wheeler Brooks, PhD, CISW

Jennifer is a social worker with a practice background in child welfare, community organizing and development, and veterinary social work. She taught practice and social policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Jane Addams College of Social Work. She holds a PhD in Social Welfare from the University of Kansas, and an MSW from the University of Maryland at Baltimore. She is Director of Social Work and Outreach at WisCARES, where she provides social work services for clients and staff, and is part of the interprofessional team that builds communication and teamwork skills for veterinary medical, social work, and pharmacy students.

Ruthanne Chun, DVM, DACVIM and Elizabeth Alvarez, DVM, DABVP

Ruthanne is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine. She completed a 1-year rotating internship in Small Animal Medicine and Surgery at Cornell University and then completed a comparative medical oncology residency at Purdue University. Ruthanne is a Clinical Professor in Oncology at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine. She served as Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs at the UW SVM for 11 years and currently serves as Section Head of Medical Oncology, Chief of Large Animal Services and the Director of WisCARES. She has served as the president of the Veterinary Cancer Society, the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine Specialty of Oncology, and the American Association of Veterinary Clinicians.  Within the UW SVM she works as a clinical oncologist and she co-chairs the Professional Skills Curriculum Development team.

 

Elizabeth Alvarez, DVM, DABVP

Dr. Elizabeth (Liddy) Alvarez is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Primary Care Service where she has been teaching students at the University of Wisconsin, Madison for the past 16 years. Liddy graduated from Michigan State University with her DVM in 2003 and completed a rotating internship at Veterinary Specialty Center in Lynnwood, WA in 2007.  She also became a diplomate of the American Board of Veterinary Practitioners (canine and feline practice) in 2013. She is passionate about teaching the next generation of veterinarians to practice Primary Care through utilizing Spectrum of Care strategies and serves as Chair of both the AAVMC Primary Care Veterinary Educators (PCVE) community as well as the AAVMC Spectrum of Care Initiative (SOCI) Educator Working Group.

 

Liddy has been a part of building the UW-Madison outreach program, WisCARES (Wisconsin Companion Animal Resources, Education, and Social Services) since its inception in 2014. WisCARES is a One Health program, a collaboration with the UW Schools of Social Work and Pharmacy established to help pet owners experiencing homelessness and housing instability increase access to animal and human healthcare and social services. She has served as Medical Director and is currently the Curriculum Director for WisCARES, where she focuses on the student experience, research, and obtaining grant funding for the program. In 2022 Liddy was awarded the UW-SVM inaugural Ruth M. Skaar Chair in Veterinary Medicine, a five-year endowed award focused on innovative teaching and education research and was named the prestigious AAVMC National Distinguished Veterinary Teacher award in 2023. Because of her work with interprofessional healthcare work through WisCARES, Dr. Alvarez was named the 2023 Distinguished Fellow in the National Academies of Practice (NAP). Distinguished practitioners and scholars are elected by their peers from multiple different health professions to join the only interprofessional group of healthcare practitioners and scholars dedicated to supporting affordable, accessible, coordinated quality healthcare for all.

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