Assessing Handlers for Competence in Animal-Assisted Interventions

By Ann R. Howie

Through practical, real-life examples, Assessing Handlers for Competence in Animal-Assisted Interventions provides guidance to any person working with animals in any setting. Facilities that have volunteers who work independently are in the greatest need of competent handlers, yet many of those facilities accept handlers with only proof of animal vaccinations. Other facilities accept an evaluation of the animal-handler team without knowing whether that evaluation relates to their facility or client dynamics. Both of these problems easily can be remedied with basic guidance.

Howie brings more than thirty years of experience as an AAI provider, coordinator, and mental health therapist to bear on the topic of competence for animal handlers. In a friendly, easy-to-read style, she clearly explains the need for competencies while identifying broad categories currently in use. She then outlines training that addresses those competencies based on individual facility and client dynamics. She further describes one model for easily integrating competency assessment into an interview and provides a form for documenting the competency assessment. Additionally, Howie addresses how to deal with problems that can arise in program management.

Anyone who reads this book will come away with the knowledge and confidence to assess handlers’ competence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Release date: Sep 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781612496771

Ann R. Howie

With a distinctive combination of personal experience and professional training in both the human and animal fields, Ann R. Howie has spent her life helping humans better appreciate canines. A trained psychotherapist, she observed similarities in the behavior of human and nonhuman animals, and the effects they have on each other, which led her to integrate animal-assisted therapy into her psychotherapy practice and to obtain a credential as a dog trainer. She was part of the initial task force that identified standards for the emerging field of animal-assisted therapy in the early 1990s, and she later combined her professional training and observation experience to help Pet Partners write numerous handbooks, design multiple trainings for humans, and provide assessments of handlers and animals. Howie is the author of Teaming With Your Therapy Dog, and her Therapy Animal’s Bill of Rights has been adopted by many visiting-animal programs internationally. She lives in Olympia, Washington.

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Introduction

SINCE THE 1960S, THE FIELD OF EDUCATION IN THE U.S. HAS BEEN INCREASINGLY INFLUENCED by the concept of competency-based education: helping students learn performance-based competencies rather than solely learning data. Competency-based education focuses on outcomes rather than the learning itself. The concept of competency has become integrated into many fields, including animal-assisted interventions (AAI). Organizations like the American Counseling Association and the American Psychological Association (the Human-Animal Interaction section of Division 17) have published competencies related not only to providing mental health therapy but also to providing such therapy with the assistance of a therapy animal.

It follows that volunteer animal handlers as well as professional therapists could be expected to demonstrate competence in the broad field of AAI (activities, therapy, education/learning, literacy, and more). It is becoming more common in the U.S. to find volunteers in hospitals with their therapy dogs. Even television shows and commercials now include therapy dogs in their scripts.

Volunteer AAI handlers in facilities generally work quite independently with their animals, often without direct supervision. In contrast, some animal handlers work directly with a human healthcare clinician in mental or physical health, where the animal handler is responsible for the animal and the therapist staff member is responsible for the client. Even in this latter situation, the therapist rarely provides direct supervision to the animal handler and may not have influence over which animal-handler team to work with.

Given the high level of independent work, finding an animal-handler team who is a good fit is essential for everyone’s safety. This book provides guidance to clinicians, facility staff, and program coordinators to help them determine whether a handler is competent to independently provide safe service in their facility or program.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT TERMINOLOGY

It can be quite helpful for readers to agree on terminology. Even though that sounds simple, practitioners in this field have disagreed about terms (sometimes stridently!) since the 1980s—from pet therapy to animal-assisted interventions. As a result, I’m going to take a moment to review a little history and make sure you know how I am using terminology in this book. To reduce additional unnecessary conflict, I am using terms consistently with how they are used internationally.

•  Animal-assisted interventions (AAI) is currently used as a broad term to encompass all aspects of animal-assisted work (activities, education, therapy, and others), even though, paradoxically, the word intervention has a precise definition within therapy specifically. Therapy provided by a credentialed therapist with the assistance of an animal is known as animal-assisted therapy. In the 2000s and 2010s, the broad term used to cover all applications was animal-assisted interactions, so you are likely to find that term (also abbreviated as AAI) in AAI literature. Please consider the use of the acronym AAI in this book to refer to all applications of animal-assisted work, not solely therapy.

•  Coordinator refers to the person who is coordinating AAI. These people may be individual therapists, volunteer coordinators at a facility, coordinators of an AAI program, or coordinators of an AAI group.

•  Facility refers to the AAI work site, from a large facility to a small private practice.

•  Handler refers to the human who is the therapy animal’s partner and guide during AAI. This is usually the person with whom the animal lives, as that person knows the animal best, has trained the animal, and has developed a working partnership with the animal. Even though clients may touch (or handle) the animal during AAI, the handler is the animal’s well-known human on the other end of the leash.

•  Client refers to the human(s) receiving AAI.

•  Program refers to AAI, whether provided by a large group of volunteers or an individual therapist.

•  Therapy dog or therapy animal refers to an animal who is working in AAI. Since the early 1990s, practitioners have been in conflict over whether therapy animal is the best term, since animals work in many AAI applications, not solely therapy. Future generations will make their own decisions. For now, since therapy animal is the generally accepted term for all AAI work, that is the term you will find in this book.

•  The personal pronouns she and he are used for animals. Animals are not an it but instead are cognitive and emotional living beings.

Whether you are the volunteer coordinator at a facility or a visiting-animal group coordinator or a therapist in a private practice seeking to work with AAI animal handlers, you want assurance that the teams you bring into your program will be safe and will promote, not hinder, your brand. Using competency-based assessment helps give you that assurance.

This book provides clear guidance to coordinators in assessing the competency of their AAI animal handlers in a way that fits into their current manner of approving volunteers.

1

The Importance of Assessing Handler Competence

THERE IS A QUOTE ATTRIBUTED TO MARK TWAIN THAT SAYS, "KEEP AWAY FROM PEOPLE who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can somehow become great." In the field of animal-assisted interventions (AAI), there can be many ambitions. If your ambition is to make your program great, you’re in the right place. This book will help you do what is needed to become great.

The field of volunteer-provided AAI has grown tremendously since it began to achieve popularity in the U.S. in the late 1990s. It has expanded from a few hospital-based programs to programs in prisons, schools and universities, libraries, retirement communities, and just about anywhere else humans receive service. But with popularity often comes a change in quality, and that is just as possible in AAI as it is in other fields. Humans are skilled at utilizing opportunity, sometimes without adequate care for the quality of the product, whether living or not. For example, in an effort to demonstrate their acknowledgment of the benefits of the human-animal bond, some facilities welcome all animals without regard for the animals’ or handlers’ ability to be in that facility safely. Rather than embracing the human-animal bond, such practices instead are embracing the hope that nothing will go wrong. Which is not a robust risk-management or quality-assurance strategy.

One example of growth in the field of AAI is the way that animal-handler teams are evaluated. Most people intuitively understand the need for an evaluation of the animal. In fact, initial evaluations in the U.S. focused solely on the animal. (Unfortunately for liability reduction, some therapy animal organizations still subscribe to that limited philosophy.) Such animal evaluations were sometimes conducted by veterinarians. While veterinarians are highly trained in animal health, the profession does not train them in the dynamics of human-animal teams interacting with human populations, which is the core of AAI. Consequently, general-practice veterinarians as a group are not necessarily the best choice when it comes to evaluating an animal’s behavior for AAI. The national organization Pet Partners was the first to break the only-the-animal-needs-evaluation tradition and begin to evaluate the handler as well as the animal. Gradually, more and more organizations have recognized the value of evaluating how handlers and animals work together rather than solely how animals act on their own.

Behavior, rather than knowledge, more accurately predicts how a person will perform on the job.

Separately from AAI, since the 1970s competency-based education has gained influence in the U.S. (McClarty 2015). Concurrently, we are becoming more refined in our understanding that a person’s knowledge is only one aspect of the dynamic in job performance (for both paid staff and volunteers). Behavior, rather than knowledge, more accurately predicts how a person will perform on the job. Knowledge informs behavior, yet a highly knowledgeable person may not be skilled at applying that knowledge. As a result, many educational organizations are transforming their assessments from solely knowledge based to performance (competency) based (Hudson 2018).

AAI programs—whether therapy, activities, education/learning, literacy/reading, or other—have unique needs in both their animals and their animal handlers.

In AAI, it is the handler who has the greatest potential to do harm.

When comparing the handler- and the animal-end of the leash in AAI, it is the handler who has the greatest potential to do harm. Without a competent handler, even the best-mannered animal can get into trouble. As a result, assessing the handler, not just the animal, is essential.

Even with our new appreciation for the importance of competence, the overall field of AAI neglects to assess handlers’ applied AAI behavior. Instead, most AAI assessments rely on telling handlers what to do when and then seeing if they do what was requested. That kind of assessment does not accurately reflect a handler’s ability to think independently and respond appropriately in real-life circumstances. Further, most AAI assessments occur in settings that have little resemblance to the eventual workplace. While some assessment is better than no assessment, current tell-them-what-to-do testing falls far short of what is needed for the field to progress and for AAI to be safe.

Some facilities welcome so-called therapy animals with no behavioral screening but with only vaccination records as their credential. Volunteer animal handlers often work highly independently, with minimal, if any, staff supervision. If the handlers have received screening, it was most likely of the tell-them-what-to-do sort. Yet while working, those same handlers are expected to make sound, independent decisions about how to provide safe, effective service with their animal.

Handlers are expected to make sound, independent decisions while providing safe, effective service.

Few facility staff have the expertise or training in AAI to supervise AAI teams effectively. Which means those likely ineffectively prepared handlers are on their own, asking vulnerable clients to interact with their animal (who may or may not have been screened beyond vaccinations). This situation intensifies the importance of identifying handlers who are competent to provide safe service with their animal before being set free in the facility. Yet what resources are available for facility volunteer coordinators or therapists wishing to partner with an animal-handler team to assess that team’s fit with their facility? You are reading it.

Competency-based assessment helps you get a better sense of the person behind the resume (a previous advertising tagline for the internet-based hiring company Indeed). This book begins by explaining competency-based assessment as a method of determining behavioral competence. It then applies that concept to assessment of animal handlers in AAI programs. It goes further to provide sample AAI competencies that can be generally applied to virtually any facility, and it gives guidance about determining facility-specific competencies. It explains how to assess the presence of those competencies, including a model of interview- and performance-based handler competency assessment that can easily be incorporated into a facility’s current practices without specialized training of staff. It also provides guidance in therapy animal competencies and how both the coordinator and handler may assure therapy animal welfare. (Therapy animal welfare is important because human welfare is a by-product of therapy animal welfare.) Finally, it offers perspective on the effect of competency-based assessment on ongoing program management.

It is important to emphasize again that some national and local AAI evaluation instruments address the handler and some do not. The handler’s competence (or lack of it) has significant implications for coordinators and their AAI programs. Regardless of whether the evaluation instrument you currently use addresses the handler, this book shows you how to increase your probability of success and improve the safety of your program by taking the time to personally evaluate the competence of handlers who come to you. You will go even further by personally evaluating the competence of handlers with their animals: their teamwork. You do not have to be an expert in animal behavior to do this. This book provides guidance you can combine with your current practices, observation skills, and intuition.

Several stakeholders benefit from competency-based assessment:

Volunteer coordinators have greater assurance that