Therapet® Working With Children Assessment

In response to feedback from our volunteers, including a survey from our Area Representatives, our Board has reviewed the requirements for Therapets to work with children. Until now, the requirement has been that a dog must complete a minimum of one year of consistent visiting before being re-assessed to work with children. As a result of this review, our new requirements are:

Therapet Assesments for Working with Children will now be permitted after 9 months visiting, with a minimum of 18 visits that are undertaken regularly and consistently.

Important Points

· If the Area Rep or Assessor feels that the Therapet is not ready at the 9-month mark, then they will not put them through the assessment and the Therapet will be required to undertake further work.

· Dogs must be a minimum of two years old to be eligible for the Working with Children assessment

· A Therapet’s first school placement should not be into an additional needs unit or special needs school. A calm, controlled, Reading with Dogs environment is required so that the Therapet is introduced steadily to school environments. We are being increasingly asked to fulfil requests to visit more complex school environments, and some have been turned down because we feel there is too much risk to our volunteers and their dogs. Another committee is about to review our procedures for visiting such schools to highlight the risks involved and provide more specific guidance for Area Reps, Volunteers, and the schools themselves. While we will have children with complex needs attend RWD sessions in a mainstream, it is incumbent on the school to ensure that the appropriate level of staffing is present during the session and our volunteer is made appropriately aware in advance.

This is a major change for us, and the bottom line is the dog must pass the assessment before being approved to work with children. Note that, as happens currently, the dog will not be able to work with children until our office has confirmed with the Area Rep that they have received the completed assessment form and our files have been updated.

Please don’t confuse this with the recent changes to PVG…if a Therapet is working with 16–17-year-olds they do not need to be approved to work with children, however, the volunteer does need to have their PVG updated to Adults & Children to meet legal requirements.