SURVIVING LOCKDOWN
When the country went into lockdown on March 23rd the RSPCA had to make the difficult decision to furlough as many staff as possible to save money and enable the remaining staff to safely socially distance .
A total of 13 staff in the Animal Centre were placed on furlough , and the admin team were asked to work from home . We altered the rotas so that there were just the minimum amount of staff necessary to keep the site running , and closed the Centre to all volunteers and the public . Strict social distancing guidelines were put into place so that there was only one staff member per area , we changed to email responses rather than accepting phone calls to save staff time and followed new protocols to safeguard ourselves when accepting animals from the Inspectorate . Our current fosterers were sent supplies of flea and worm treatment , and asked to carry out their animal health checks themselves for the foreseeable future .
We had many animals at the Centre that we were unable to rehome or foster , so concentrated our efforts on making sure they were well cared for and coping while they too were on lockdown . safely there , cats and small animals were delivered either by our fabulous Inspectorate team , network drivers or staff members on their way home from work .
It was all very different from the norm , but our team and the public embraced it and made it a big success .
Last month further steps were introduced to become “ COVID-SECURE ”. This has involved comprehensive risk assessments to enable us to allow some public back on site to collect animals and meet dogs . We created a new dog mixing area that the public can drive into
On April 17th we were given the news that we could resume adoptions and fostering in a new “ remote ” way . This involved asking the interested person to email us photos and video footage of their home and animals , provide us with ID . In turn we sent back video footage of the animal they wanted to adopt and had in depth conversations on the phone . All the paperwork was to be sent via email for signing and final payment was done over the phone . At this point we had to deliver animals to their new homes , so in the case of dogs they were taken to the new owners back garden by staff and introduced
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