Since 2010, the rates of homelessness in the UK have risen steadily. Becoming homeless means more than just losing a roof over your head- it means compromising on your own security, income, health and relationships. This makes the relationship with your pet, who may be your only constant companion, even more important.
Many people who find themselves homeless with a pet say they would rather forego their own meal than let their companion go hungry. Some live in fear of their animals becoming unwell with no accessible veterinary help. Others worry about being separated from their pet in the event of their own ill health.
This is where StreetVet comes in. Founded in 2017, this fantastic charity coordinates teams of veterinary professionals to provide care to the pets of homeless people throughout the UK. The charity has grown to a network of over 600 vets and vet nurses, who bring their veterinary expertise, medications and treatment to their patients on the streets.
I spoke with Juliet, an experienced veterinary surgeon, about her time as a regular outreach volunteer at StreetVet Bristol. We discussed her motivation for joining the charity, the benefits of volunteering and rediscovering the joy of veterinary work.
To start, can you tell me a little about your veterinary background?
I qualified [as a veterinary surgeon] 26 years ago from Bristol [University]. When I first started out, I did mixed-practice work for a while. I’ve now been doing nothing but small animals since 2001. And then, I decided to go down the specialist line. I did a residency and I ended up doing referrals in soft tissue surgery.
And had you had previous experience working with charities or low-income clients before StreetVet came onto the scene?
In terms of low income clients, I had only previously worked with those clients on an intermittent basis- so people who came for surgery but couldn’t afford the top level treatment. But not true low-income. I’d never worked in a charity environment before.
How did you come to be involved with StreetVet?
[While I really enjoyed referral medicine], it took me away from one of the things that I actually loved most about being a vet, which was the relationships with people. That is, getting to know the clients and seeing them through a pet’s lifetime. And referral work is not like that, so I really kind of lost my way. I wasn’t enjoying it any more, and it caused my mental health to suffer.So, I stepped away. My current job is non-clinical, and so the only clinical work I do at the moment is for StreetVet.
And actually, I love it. It kinda reminded me a lot about why I wanted to study vet in the first place.
And it takes away that huge thing about the money, because if we really truly think a certain treatment should be done, then we can argue for it, and the charity will come through. And if there’s a better or a cheaper way, it also okay to do that.
So I really do love it.
My thoughts exactly. Voluntary work can really give you back that spark of joy about being a vet.
Yes, and the relationships between the [outreach] clients and their pets is so special.
And its a very different version to what we see in general practice. In GP veterinary clinics, we see so many pets who are in, at face value, really wonderful family homes. They have everything they need, they have probably too much food, you know. But mum and dad go out to work full-time. And there’s an awful lot of animals suffering with separation anxiety.
Then you see these homeless people, and they don’t have anything. So everything they’ve got, they give to their pets, including their time and affection and love. So separation anxiety isn’t an issue for them until they need to be separated for a different reason.
Can you talk me the sort of tasks you might do on a typical street vet outreach as a new volunteer?
For a first time volunteer, generally speaking we try to hand hold everybody. No one is ever pressured.
So for me as a newby, I signed up for a weekend morning. I was told where I should be, I don’t think I needed to bring anything with me but I brought my stethoscope and my [pouch]. And I was taken around the route- here we have the same route we do each morning and we can see all the people that we would be expected to see. And then we have an hour where we stay in a particular park, so people know where we’ll be and they can come to us.
And it was just really lovely, everyone was really welcoming, both the other volunteers and the people we saw were just really glad to see us. For a newby it was super nice and super easy to make a difference.
It was really obvious that the dogs had seen a streetvet before and were really excited for us arriving. And so I don’t think it took me long to realise that I was willing to step up, and go to the next level and lead an outreach here in Bristol when we were short.
How many hours are you expected to contribute as a volunteer at StreetVet?
We ask you to sign up for two hours a month, so that’s only one outreach every month.
Different people find ways to volunteer that suit their lifestyle. We have people who have family commitments or other issues that make coming out regularly a lot harder. So we do have an outreach every weekend on a morning, and every other week we go on a weekday evening as well. I’ve been out on an evening a couple of times, but for me that’s really difficult as I commute for my job and often don’t get home till its too late. Whereas I can give up a weekend morning once per month quite easily.
And if a weekend doesn’t work then there are people who go out on the hostel visits, as those are much more intermittent. So there are opportunities for everybody that fit different people’s lifestyles. I do think there are ways of making it work for everyone, and I can’t think of any work situation where a vet or a vet nurse wouldn’t be able to find a pattern to suit them.
Its great to know that there is flexibility for volunteers- veterinary professionals are not known for getting away from work on time at the end of the day!
Yeah, well it depends what you’re hoping to get out of being a StreetVet. If you think, you know, I can’t come out regularly but I could do fundraising. I can come and stand up for you on a weekend at a festival once a year, you know we’d love to hear from people like that.
And with the outreach, there’s at least an hour of preparation. Then there’s the paperwork you have to do when you finish. So I did a shout out, and amazingly one of our vet nurses came forward and said that she wanted to become a bit more involved, and would be happy to do the notes every week. So now the lead vets, when they finish, they don’t have to go and do the clinical notes. They can just send their scribbling for the day to someone else who can upload it onto the computer.
So I think there are lots of ways that StreetVet can evolve to make it work for everybody. There are so many things they can do to help out, so people don’t need to be put off by feeling they have to make a big commitment.
How do the medical conditions and diseases that you see on the streets compare to what you see in standard GP practice?
You know what, its remarkably the same.
I think we see a lot less wounds than I was expecting. I think I thought there would be a lot more fighting between the dogs, but that’s not the case. We actually see a lot of dry eye in Bristol, there’s an awful lot of eye problems, so I don’t know if that’s related to exposure to the elements. In fact we have a dog that wears ‘doggles’ to help with her eye problems.
Also there’s ear problems and skin problems. Occasional diarrhoea. And now and again something serious- first time I acted as a lead vet that I saw a dog that had a pyometra.
And I understand that if you do find a surgical condition like pyometra, you can send the dog for treatment at a partner hospital?
Yes, absolutely.
So in Bristol, our out-of-hours and our surgery is covered by [a local clinic]. So we can ring ahead and send clients down there. They’re really great, they keep us updated on patients and give us results. They give the charity a discount, they don’t charge us full price. That works really well, and there’s a bit of a crossover as some of our volunteers actually work there as well.
Let’s talk about safety- one of the concerns my colleagues have raised about volunteering for StreetVet is that some outreaches take place in large cities at night. Have you always felt safe as a volunteer? Does StreetVet have processes in place to manage this potential concern?
I generally work the weekend mornings which is always daylight. So I’ve never had a situation where I felt unsafe.
Actually, there is definitely a massive sense of community within the homeless people and they value our presence. If anyone was seen to be doing the wrong thing by the StreetVets, I actually think that other people would come to our defence.
So I’ve never felt threatened, and even those nights, when it was dark in the winter, even then I didn’t feel unsafe.
Inevitably there are potential risks. But it terms of what we do with safety, I think its safety in numbers, and ensuring that we don’t have anything that others would want to acquire. We don’t have valuables on show, and we don’t do any work alone. It’s common sense really.
And there has to be some trust involved in both directions. The homeless community have to trust us that we’re not there to take their dog away, and we have to trust them that they are going to behave appropriately.
I think a lot of it is perception. When I was at the StreetVet outreach in Glasgow, I felt really safe! Everyone I met was really warm and kind and I loved my time there. For me, not having had a lot of experience with the homeless community, I didn’t know what to expect, but in the end I had no trouble.
Yeah. For me, the thing that I’ve been most worried about is what I would do if I found one of our clients in serious trouble physically. That is something I have been concerned about. As we said, they look after their pets better than they look after themselves. And so if they themselves have a medical issue that needs treatment and they go into hospital, its makes helping with their pets so much harder.
And that’s something I found as well- that mental health issues can be more noticeable in these clients than in GP clinics. But veterinary training aside, just taking a little time to speak to people did seem to really help.
Yeah, there’s at least a couple of guys who you can’t miss, they’re there every week. And my interpretation is that for them its this massive source of reassurance, as well as company. They are always happy to see us, we’re happy to see them. They’re always uber grateful. And I feel a little embarrassed about it, I feel they shouldn’t be too grateful because I actually really enjoying doing it! Its not all altruistic, I get a real kick out of it!
And speaking of enjoying the outreach, do you think that becoming a StreetVet volunteer has had a positive impact on your skills or your outlook generally?
I think if its valuable in the way that it makes you consider the options that deviate from gold standard in veterinary treatment.
When we graduate we come out with these rose tinted spectacles about how doing our job is going to make an impact on the world, and that we’re going to be able to treat and cure. And then we come up against the brick wall [with clients] of finance and insurance, and that’s why mental health is such a problem for us as a profession.
Then when you start street-vetting, you learn some real lessons.
When you’re street-vetting, you don’t have the option to give the gold standard treatments. But what you do is effective for that client and for that animal. You know, we don’t have to rush out and do an intradermal skin test for every animal that has a skin condition. We know its probably atopy, its not going to end up on immunotherapy so there’s no point doing intradermal skin testing. What we’ll do is make him comfortable. The dog lives outdoors so we can’t get him away from exposure to pollen, so we have to think laterally- ok, lets think about anti-histamines and topical treatment. And worse case scenario, we start steroids. And if that’s worse case scenario, that’s okay!
So I think we can offer a different perspective on how we treat things, which is valuable.
Do you think that volunteering with StreetVet is something that any vet or vet nurse could do? Are there any personality traits or skills required to get started?
Pretty much. There’s definitely a role for everybody and anybody. Inevitably there will be different challenges and different benefits to everybody that volunteers, but there is always a role that we can find. So if someone was uncomfortable around homeless people or anxious, then we could find a way of managing that.
In terms of personality traits, I think that its helpful to have a little resilience. But I also think that if you don’t have much resilience, you might gain some by coming. So what have you got to lose by giving it a try?
And is there any minimum level of veterinary experience that you need to be able to join StreetVet?
No, as long as you have decent footwear, you don’t mind getting wet.
You have to have a decent sense of humour too- you don’t mind someone who is going to tell you a dirty joke that you don’t think is that funny, and you can take that on the chin.
That’s a great answer- a sense of humour is so important. Is there anything else that you’d like to add about Streetvet?
Well, I hope one of two things. Either that the charity continues to go from strength to strength- but actually probably what I want more is that we don’t need to be there at all. But that doesn’t seem likely anytime soon.
And I think with that you’ve just about covered it already, but my final question is- would you recommend volunteering with StreetVet to others in the veterinary profession?
Yes, one hundred percent.
Come and try it, and see if you love it like the rest of us do!
And if you don’t, that’s ok, there’s no pressure. But I think everybody should try it, because I think some people would really surprise themselves how much they enjoy it. It might give them a real joy for working in a charitable organisation, or volunteering around the world where there are other animals that could benefit from our skills. It can give everybody that buzz from remembering how great it is to be a vet, and what a wonderful gift it is to have got there when actually being a vet day in and day out can be really hard.
I would just recommend it to everybody.
Thank you so much to Juliet for sharing her experience as a StreetVet volunteer and team leader in Bristol.
Further Information
StreetVet is a registered charity that currently operates in 16 cities around the UK- read their charity profile here to see if you could be a good fit!
Find out more about how to you can help them, or how to become a Vet or Vet Nurse volunteer through the StreetVet website or facebook page.
Would you like to read more about the experience of veterinary volunteers around the world? Check out the Volunteer Page.
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