The Internet and Online Communities

In continuation from my second blog post, I'd like to focus on the use of animals in therapy.  Prior to commencing my occupational therapy studies, I had a career as a veterinary nurse, and at one clinic had the chance to run puppy socialisation classes, which occasionally contained future guide dogs and hearing assistance dogs.  My placement last year at Riding for the Disabled showed me a different way in which animals can prove therapeutic to people.  I thought this blog task could expand my knowledge even further, in combining two different passions, animals and helping people, as well as exploring how they work from an occupational therapy perspective, as well as looking at ethical considerations regarding their pages.


Outreach Therapy Pets - St John and SPCA Auckland 
http://www.stjohn.org.nz/en/What-we-do/Community-programmes/Partnered-programmes/Outreach-Therapy-Pets/

Outreach Therapy Pets is a joint venture run by the Order of St John and the SPCA Auckland, which operates in Auckland, Kerikeri, Waihi and Thames, and involves volunteers and their animals visiting people in the community providing animal-assisted activity or animal-assisted therapy.  AAA is an informal visiting service.  AAT provides goal-based professional intervention.  One common goal of AAT is to assist with occupational transition, which "can be defined as a major change in the occupational repertoire of a person in which one or several occupations change, disappear, and/or are replaced with others" (Jonsson, 2010, p. 212).  Such transitions can include retirement, and older people are a common user group for this service.  The purpose of this page is to provide a brief introduction to the Outreach Therapy Pets service.  It has been created by St John, a highly reputable organisation, and only St John can contribute to the page.  Interaction is via one of two options, an enquiries email link, or an online volunteers request form, although the page also provides a toll-free telephone number.  From an ethical perspective, this page contains one photographic image, in which neither the person nor the dog are identified.


C.H.A.M.P. Assistance Dogs Prison Programme
http://www.champdogs.org/prison-program/prison-program 

This programme operates out of a women's correctional facility in Missouri, and involves prisoners working in one of two programmes, one which provides basic training for shelter dogs in order to make them more adoptable, or one in which prisoners train one specific dog in more advanced disability service skills.  This programme looks not only at providing trained dogs for the community, but also tackles the issue of occupational deprivation caused by incarceration.  Occupational deprivation occurs when "people are unable to participate in occupations due to structural as opposed to personal reasons" (Whiteford, 2010, p. 304).  The page is controlled by C.H.A.M.P. Assistance Dogs, Inc, and provides basic information on how the prison programmes run, with a link to a volunteer's report on a visit to the prison programme, a PDF document with greater detail for viewers of the page who are considering a similar programme for their instution, and a link for visitors to the page to email the service.  As with the Outreach Therapy Pets page, content contribution is limited to the page creators.  Both the main prison programme page and the volunteer's report contain unaltered images of the interior of the prison, the dogs, and some inmates.  No inmate is named on the main page, however one is named by first-name only.  Informed consent from each individual would be needed for unaltered images to be uploaded to the internet, or published in any other pulic manner.  As an NPO working in conjunction with a state facility, it would be fair to suggest that strict confidentiality protocols are in place.


Dogster.com Service and Therapy Dogs Forum
http://www.dogster.com/forums/Service_and_Therapy_Dogs

This page provides an online forum for people who are training or using service or therapy dogs.  Unlike the two previous sites, it is open to the public, and the majority of the contribution comes from registered members.  The only restriction upon joining the community is that it is for private individuals only. There are some restrictions as to what content can be posted, and the discussion boards do have some moderation.  Members may upload their own photos as ID, or include them in their posts, as well as create hyperlinks to other pages, but the sharing of any third party's information or material without consent is forbidden.  This group is non-professional in its moderation, and as such, the advice given may not always be appropriate for users posing questions.  Members create new threads to discuss elements of training or ownership, often seeking advice on becoming volunteers, the legal requirements of service/therapy pet ownership and management, and asking for tips on training.  Members may reply to any thread, or on any of the other boards in the site.  Some of the topics include training dogs to respond to events such as seizures, which can cause occupational disruption, which is "temporary and transient" (Whiteford, 2010, p. 305).  With a forum this large and public, and with a small number of moderators, privacy could certainly be an issue.


References

Jonsson, H. (2010). Occupational transitions: Work to retirement. In C.H. Christiansen & E.A. Townsend (Eds.), Introduction to occupation: The art and science of living (pp. 211-230). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education Incorporated.

Whiteford, G. (2010). Occupational deprivation: Understanding limited participation. In C.H. Christiansen & E.A. Townsend (Eds.), Introduction to occupation: The art and science of living (pp. 303-328). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education Incorporated.