Animal Welfare Professionals

This message was posted by a user wishing to remain anonymous

Hi!

I was just reaching out to the animal welfare community to see how other organizations handle their foster families fostering for multiple organizations at the same time. Do you have a rule that they can only foster for one place at a time? Once they return the animal from Organization A , then they can come and foster animals at your organization etc.  Do you allow them to foster animals from your organization and another at the same time if they follow certain guidelines? If you have any SOP on the matter , or even just fostering two groups unrelated but from same organization, I would love to see how you do it!

#FosterPrograms

Hi,

In our training we go over only allowing fosters to foster for one organization at a time and prefer that they give some time to properly disinfect between cases. Not every organization follows the same policies, so we lean towards explaining that we don't want them with other animals that we are not monitoring or following the same vaccine protocols. We don't have an SOP for it, and I feel that if it was two adult animals we may consider it. 

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Wendy Arnold
Animal Programs Manager
Humane Society of Central Oregon
OR
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I volunteer for a shelter and foster for an independent foster-based rescue.  Although they do like to know if you foster for anyone else, neither foster program has a blanket rule prohibiting fostering for multiple organizations.  Each organization has similar but distinct guidelines that fosters agree to follow in service of their respective programs with regard to care, appointments, sanitization, exposure to household pets, etc.  Each organization respects fosters as reasonable adults who met the criteria to foster in the first place and therefore should be trustworthy and capable of following the standards they agreed to uphold.  Why create barriers when you should be working with people you trust?

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Erin Linsky
Volunteer, Kitten Foster
Fort Wayne IN
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We do not have an SOP on this but we ask our fosters to only foster for one organization. Our primary reason is that we have had issues with disease, such as ringworm from another rescue. 

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carma Hurt
volunteer
Friends of Coos County Animals
OR
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