I have generally made two sentence prompts and had staff take turns who is the "adopter" and who is the adoption counsellor. I think it's pretty powerful to have them mix in non-roleplaying, but rather what it would be like for them (either now or from a past perspective) to adopt. That way the "adoption counsellor" doesn't know if they are talking to their actual colleague about their lived experience or about a made-up case.
In terms of what the role-plays are, I'd look for things that are particularly triggering for your adoption counsellors' and their biases. Some ideas: gift animals, inebriated client, client who doesn't want the dog neutered, they're adopting a puppy for the child to learn responsibility, they want to declaw, don't believe in vaccines, don't have enough money for an adoption fee, one person in the family doesn't want a pet, believes in aversive training techniques.
At one point in my career, we merged with another adoption organization, and I had to work to retrain a group of staff which came from really restrictive adoption policies. There were a few clear pain points that were going to be hard to overcome, particularly indoor-outdoor cats. For those ones, we practiced our spiel about the issue at hand with a mouthful of (vegan) marshmallows. That did help to break down defenses...
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Emily Wood
Director
Broward County Animal Care
Fort Lauderdale FL
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