After a successful 12 month pilot of our re-modelled service provisions in East Yorkshire, we’re thrilled to say community support is here to stay!
Charities up and down the country have faced significant challenges over the past few years and Jerry Green Dog Rescue are no exception. With a global pandemic taking hold in 2020, followed by a difficult financial climate and cost of living crisis, we’ve had to act fast to safeguard our future.
Our mission since 1961 has been to provide a safe place for homeless dogs and to seek new loving places for them to live. To enable us to continue to do this, we have strategically reviewed our service model to ensure that we can create the highest impact, balanced with managing rising costs.
Last year, our service review found that our East Yorkshire centre was the least economical centre to operate. This is due to a number of reasons, including increased maintenance costs associated with the age of the facility and the requirement to undertake a significant refurbishment to ensure the highest welfare for our dogs.
We know that caring for dogs in need is much more than just bricks and mortar, so we got our heads together to forge a way to stay in our much loved East Yorkshire community. We closed the doors of our centre, reinvesting cost savings into staffing levels and additional expertise at our North Lincolnshire centre and our former Centre Manager, Lauren, embarked on a brand new role.
Lauren is now our Community Support Manager, with her role bringing our services directly to the people who need them in the areas in which we serve. Lauren supports the re-homing of dogs in East Yorkshire, through our Home from Home adoption model, placements in foster homes and re-directing dogs to our expert teams at our three remaining centres in North Lincolnshire, South Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. In addition, Lauren is working hard to help people in our community to keep their dogs in a happy home by supporting with rising costs and changes in circumstances.
Through Lauren’s vision and drive to keep families and their beloved pets together, we now offer support with the provision of dog food, flea and worming treatments and even beds and toys through our doggy food banks. We provide financial support on a case by case basis to help with unexpected vet bills through our Veterinary Support Scheme; plus we’re piloting a brand new community dog walking scheme, to provide adhoc support to owners who are struggling to exercise their dog.
In light of the above, we have taken the decision to continue with this piloted mode of operations in the East Yorkshire area, which we are working to grow and expand, as we are convinced this is how we can best serve our communities. We will therefore not be reopening the East Yorkshire centre in its traditional rehoming format, and have taken the decision to sell the property, to fund our vital work.
Talking about community services, Lauren said; ‘I think that closing the doors of East Yorkshire was scary for everyone, it’s the fear of the unknown. We have spent a full year trialling our community model, to make sure that permanently closing our centre is absolutely the right decision.
‘I have such fond memories of my time working at the centre, but I know that bringing services out into the community, directly to those who need them most is really important. I’m thrilled with everything we have achieved over the past year, and that the success of community services is growing outside of East Yorkshire too, across all our centre areas.’
We would like to extend our thanks and gratitude to all our incredible supporters, especially those in East Yorkshire, who have continued to support us, and our vision to make sure we are here for years to come to help find dogs in our communities their happy ever after.
Keep your eyes peeled on our social media pages to stay up to date with our community support services and ways you can get involved.
