No One Ever Asked Me That: The Value of Social Work Inquiry into the Human-Animal Bond

Abstract

The title of this chapter quotes, in part, a response from a patient when I, a clinical social worker, asked if companion animals were part of his family. He was pleasantly surprised that a health professional would have any interest in this aspect of his life. According to Risley-Curtiss (2010), two-thirds of participants (1,091) responding to an American national study on social work practitioners and the human-companion animal bond reported that they do not include questions about companion animals in assessments. However, according to Turner (2003), as much as 60 per cent of the Western world lives with at least one companion animal, but inquiry exploring the presence or absence of companion-animal bonds in psychosocial assessment has yet to be fully integrated into social work education and practice. Such inquiry can serve as a portal to identifying a myriad of psychosocial risk and protective factors associated with the human-companion animal bond. Furthermore, it can facilitate the identification and disclosure of animal welfare concerns presenting in the lives of our clients or patients.KeywordsChronic Kidney DiseaseSocial WorkRenal Replacement TherapyESRD PatientCompanion AnimalThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.