What's the Deal with Managed Intake?

The words 'managed intake' have taken on many meanings in animal welfare. Because there is some disagreement over the concept and how it should and shouldn't be practiced, we're going to dig into what we mean when we say managed intake and explain some dos and don'ts. For the purposes of this newsletter, I'll use the terms 'managed intake' and 'intake triage' interchangeably to refer to the practices and mechanisms of support that keep pets in their homes and communities whenever it's in the best interest of the pet and the person at the other end of the leash.

What managed intake IS:

1. Creating a pet help service to assist struggling pet owners in finding and accessing resources.
2. Being transparent with the public if the pet they're bringing in may be at risk of euthanasia.
3. Offering information and practical solutions to keep pets in their homes.
4. Working with overwhelmed caregivers to take in their animals in small groups, rather than all at once.
5. Providing spay/neuter and vaccination for owned pets and community cats.
6. Making free, temporary pet boarding available to pet owners experiencing a crisis.
7. Asking the public to participate in 'finder-to-foster' programs.
8. Scheduling appointments for non-emergency intake.
9. Inviting stray pet finders to file found reports and help get lost pets home.

What managed intake ISN'T:

1. Turning away animals in need or telling people to put animals back where they found them.
2. Allowing 'packs of dogs' to roam free and pose a potential threat to public safety.
3. Forcing people to keep pets they can't keep or don't want.
4. Allowing sick or injured animals to suffer without responding to cruelty, neglect, or emergency animal control calls.
5. Failing to address public safety concerns and dangerous dogs.

For large, government animal shelters, intake triage is a key lifesaving strategy because it allows shelters to time the flow of animals in to ensure every pet receives appropriate care and attention. Los Angeles County Department of Animal Services explains why they practice managed intake. They said, "With limited space at Los Angeles County animal care centers, it is our responsibility to identify any possible alternatives to impoundment, provide more robust resources, and increase positive outcomes for the animals that do have to be admitted into the care centers."

In the days before managed intake, animals entered through a transactional process that involved the finder or owner of a pet either calling animal control to pick the animal up or dropping the animal off at the shelter. Little, if any, information was collected about the pets and most shelters followed a practice of 'clearing kennels' each morning to make room for incoming animals. This resulted in millions of healthy, friendly pets being needlessly euthanized.

When shelters first started to provide intake diversion support, they learned that by the time people arrived to surrender a pet, it was often too late for the shelter to help. For this reason, shelters began scheduling intake appointments for pets whose owners wished to surrender them. By scheduling dedicated time for an intake counselor to meet with a pet owner or finder, animal shelters get better information about the pet and offer support to pet owners who want to keep their pets but face barriers to doing so.

At Pima Animal Care Center, we started a special safety net foster program so those pets could live in homes with foster caregivers while their struggling owners got back on their feet. This highly successful program is now practiced in cities, towns, and counties throughout the U.S.

If you're just getting started offering intake diversion support or practicing appointment-based intake for non-emergencies, check out this recent Shelter Animals Count and Pedigree Foundation webinar about using data to make program decisions.

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Intake triage, grounded in ethics of community engagement and pet support services, can be a key, lifesaving strategy by reducing the overall population at a shelter and therefore reducing illness, behavioral decline due to kennel stress, and unnecessary euthanasia. Need help? Check out my lost dog intake management best practice document and my dog owner surrender intake survey. Want to assess your current intake practices? Take this self-assessment.

A successful approach always begins with explaining the 'why' to your community. When people can better understand how they can be part of the solution, the majority of them will want to help. Our job is to offer support, invite help, and make it easy for everyone to participate in caring for the animals in our communities.

I recommend reading Dr. Kate Hurley's publication, "The Evolving Role of Triage and Appointment-Based Admission to Improve Service, Care and Outcomes in Animal Shelters" and the National Animal Control Association's "Guideline to Appointment-Based Pet Intake Into Shelters."

Next week, I'll share tips for how to build a better managed intake

As always, thanks for everything you do for pets and people and stay tuned for some big news next week!

Kristen

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