Animal Care: Consultancy Report on Psychological and Occupational Health Issues in Charity Sector

Study Current Concerns Against Current Studies In Psychological And Occupational Health

Is This a Fancy Name For An Essay?

So What Am i Being Assessed Against?

Why Are You Making Me Do This?

Why Is There a Literature Review As Part Of a Consultancy Report?

A charity is a nonprofit organization whose prime objectives are fundraising and social well-being. The charity aims at alleviating the suffering of a specific social problem, while philanthropy seeks to resolve the root cause of the problem. A national organization named Animal Care focuses on the rehabilitation, treatment and rehoming of small animals and wildlife. They run two sites in the midlands where small animals (e.g., hamsters, cats, rodents, dogs, foxes, hedgehogs, birds) are kept that have been found wounded or abandoned in the wild. Animal welfare is the treatment of animals that are not human. Formal animal welfare requirements differ across contexts but are often discussed by animal rights organizations, politicians and academics. The science of animal welfare uses indicators such as lifespan, illness, immunosuppression, behaviour, metabolism, and reproduction, although there is controversy about which of these best indicates animal welfare. Gratitude for animal care often focuses on the assumption that non-human animals are vulnerable and that their well-being or suffering should be taken into consideration, especially when they are under the care of humans. Animal Care work towards three goals: i) promoting the rehabilitation of injured and disabled animals; (ii) rehoming or releasing animals; and (iii) raising awareness of animals and wildlife through educational programs. Private and public sponsors drive animal care.

Additionally, a charity shop is operated by selling donated items to raise money for their programs. Animal welfare hires nearly 100 people in various handling of animals and for the roles of the stage such as administration, executives, positions in civic engagement and recruitment, farm staff, shop executives and a small sustaining team. Animal Care remains operational throughout the year, and to handle the work pressure, 120 volunteers are being introduced to the team to support their work. Along with maintaining the goals, charitable organizations face many other issues while delivering treatment to the animals. The whole focus of Animal Care is to clarify where and how their "well-being program" should set priorities. The aim and the objectives of the project have also been discussed, which are as:

Identifying problem areas that need to be resolved and recognizing what animal treatment needs to be introduced to instigate a more proactive approach, as well as resolving current issues

Make Specific Guidelines and Suggestions for Steps

This study will focus on the expertise in presenting a system based on proof, recognizing the need to create an optimistic and inclusive public picture to find a solution and collaborate with Animal Care and provide a short, high-level project plan on how the proposed initiatives would run side by side and/or sequentially.

Nonprofit organizations are influenced by their mission, context, scale, program objectives, and culture in a specific way. From laws to sales, personnel issues to the recruitment of leaders, nonprofits face a variety of obstacles are the things that they look forward to improving. The company leaders share a shared purpose of advancing the goal of their company. Leaders must recognize where their company stands on objective performance metrics concerning their peers to move forward developmentally. The study shows, across the board, that upper-midrange companies are facing more severe obstacles than their smaller and larger peers. One of the issues that have been  identified is the high incidence of mental health problems, and general well-being in the charity sector has been widely documented in the media. Financing challenges, with costs rising, is another issue. The decreased funding means that Animal Care has delayed pay increases and promotions, which is a source of resentment because salaries are smaller than comparable jobs in both the private and public sectors. Reduced levels of government and business support meant that many organizations, including Animal Care, needed to implement cost-cutting measures. Cost-cutting steps can include, closing facilities, reducing employee wages,  laying off workers, reducing employee wages, simplifying the supply chain, making the office smaller or moving to a building or location that is less costly, reducing or elimination of specialized services outside, such as suppliers and advertising agencies etc. another issue that has been pointed out is the reduction of local animal welfare team by the local council. Most cases formerly treated by the local authority are now being turned over to Animal Care, and the caseload for Animal Care is growing considerably. In a survey, it has been found that many in the positions of animal care feel extremely exhausted and burned out, as they have too many works much longer than expected. Poor satisfaction of work-life harmony is another prime issue, thus decreasing employee retention (Cloutier et al. 2015). Thus, work discontent among the staff and low morale at work is highly undesirable (Shaban et al. 2017).

Additionally, animal handlers who must rescue and recover animals must travel longer geographical distances and negotiate with more incidents, both in terms of volume of service and the length of time spent in service. Full-time workers spend most of their waking hours at work. They want to feel safe, comfortable and valued in their place and deserve it. Poor management in place leads to dissatisfaction which is identified as a major issue. For all these issues, the turnover rate has risen, and the former employees are getting employed in the private sector. A high turnover rate can contribute to low morale for employees. Lower efficiency and sub-par quality of work may result from a disturbance in day-to-day operations due to a low overall number of workers or inexperienced staff without complete training (Wandner, 2015).

Analysis of The Issues

Based on the study by Harvey et al. (2017), the objective of this article is to undertake the first thorough systematic meta-review of the evidence attributing research with the creation of severe mental health issues, specifically, anxiety, depression and/or work-related stress, and to explore how the established risk factors might be interrelated. PsychInfo, MEDLINE, Cochrane Collaboration, Embase, and grey literature repositories have been regularly scanned for assessments of work-based risk factors for serious mental health problems A longitudinal review found that 12 job-related risk factors with sufficient levels of evidence were recognized for association with higher rates of serious mental health problems; high demand for jobs, low job management, reduced social support in the workplace, ERI, Low structure, weak social equity, social change, job instability, transient employment status. A few of the factors found in this meta-reviews are the evaluation of multiple structures. They are providing a lower probability of upstream latent variables accounting for any associations between work and mental illness.

Based on the study by Pharoah, Chapman and Choudhury, (2014), the Foundation has noticed a decrease in the number of applications for funding from the North East in recent years, given the need in the region. The study had four strands to ensure a clear image of current funding problems, consisting of an analysis of existing studies; a 20-minute telephone, a survey of 182 organizations, was done via 20-minute telephone; subsequent interviews with a representative sample of 22 survey participants; and complete interviews with senior employees in nine NE area voluntary and public sector agencies. The study centred on organizations with incomes below £ 3million a year, operating in government, youth, or healthcare frontline areas. Issues impacting demand for NE funding are declining or inadequate sources of funding, decreased funding ability due to budget cuts, low expectations or ambitions, a more dynamic statutory funding system such as welfare are highly open to new public and private suppliers,  absence of access to sufficient business knowledge or support for critical organizational adjustments and changes. 44% of organizations showed that they had suffered a reduction in the tools available for income generation, and it is also for fundraising at a time of significant al in the funding climate. Financial constraints and operating infrastructure prioritization may also explain lower rates of applications for funding (Alexandridis and Hasan, 2016).

The study by Angrave and Charlwood (2015) aims to establish whether a decrease in subjective well-being is correlated With long hours of service, underemployment and overwork. The results indicate that there is no direct effect on subjective well-being for long hours of work. Still, they are correlated with lower subjective well-being in line with a person – environment-fit hypothesis, both over-employment and underwork.  Furthermore, for those who work the longest hours, over-employment is more likely. Generally, over-employment and underemployment are short, which is associated with the length of the subjective well-being penalty. Still, the levels of subjective well-being remain oppressed for those who remain over-employed for more than two years. Results indicate that the incidence of long hours of work is reduced by state and organizational policies likely to aggregate wellness rates.

Outline of Relevant Literature and Evidence

Burnout is a psychological condition of fatigue, frustration and inefficiency encountered in response to chronic stress at work (Lambert, Barton-Bellessa and Hogan, 2015). Animal care workers in the animal shelter,  medical land management industries are deemed at risk because of a variety of stress-related disorders caused by their work. Studies say that caring for an ill, dying and wounded animals, exposure to incidents of animal cruelty, combined with traumatized consoling and mourning owners, may have an adverse impact on animal carer’s health. The intent of this paper by Rohlf (2018) is to conduct a comprehensive review of literature on occupational stress and compassionate fatigue intervention programs in animal care practitioners to provide recommendations for best practice. The analysis says that in the profession of animal care, workplace stress is highly prevalent; only 4 studies testing therapeutic approaches have been reported in this community. The author suggests that supervisors in animal care professionals and mental health practitioners borrow from research carried out in other areas to carry out therapeutic procedures before a solid database is built in the animal care profession. Thus, services that combine coping skills, psychoeducation, training into a cognitive-behavioural system with possible treatment-based approaches that offer a valuable starting point for prospective mental health professionals, supervisors, and animal care managers to participate.

Pet hoarding has been considered a major issue for more than a century by professionals in animal welfare and law enforcement. However, over the last decade, it was only accepted as a sign of mental illness. Many keepers of animals fall prey to their good intentions and end up emotionally drained, socially isolated and separated from family and friends. Adding the hoarding disorder can lead to the increased use of "mental health" or "problem solving" tribunals to address animal husbandry rather than current animal cruelty criminal proceedings (Webber, and Fendt-Newlin, 2017). For this condition,  relapse prevention is said to be the appropriate treatment model, a cognitive-behavioural strategy to recognize and avoid high-risk circumstances typically applicable to obsessive-compulsive behaviour, drug abuse, and sexual offences. Another form of action that can be an effective response to cases of animal husbandry is harm mitigation or harm minimization (Lockwood,  2018). Few interventions as follows:

Translate research findings into public health policies, clinical practice, and service delivery mechanisms for cost-effective preventive strategies

Increase global, technical and political information about progress and the importance of prevention and promotion of mental health

Moves clinical practice toward risk-oriented identification and response

Provide strategies tailored to reduce the effect of risk factors for each developmental stage

Encourage multi-disciplinary and multi-level approaches (psychological, financial, family and legal)

Efforts to avoid burnout concentrated primarily on teaching people how to boost their self-esteem and tackle their tension. Efficiently managing stress and avoiding burnout involves a holistic approach by developing a structured program of preparation, instruction, supervision, and ongoing support in addition to individual work. Managers should follow a three-step approach to achieve an acceptable level of stress in their organizations:

Step 1: Think about stress,

 Step 2: create your stress reduction plan and

Step 3: set up a structured instruction, preparation, monitoring, and support program within your organization.

Employee workplace burnout has always been a problem to be confronted by employers, but today's workers report being more overworked, depressed, and unhappy than ever. Few steps to go through it are:

Improve job satisfaction

Increase personal engagement

Provide purpose

Consider reducing the workload.

One of the prime issues of this organization is cost-cutting as the government does not provide proper funding (Reheul,  Van Caneghem and Verbruggen, 2014). This cost-cutting leads to laying off employees, reducing employee pay; thus, these leads to stress on existing employees and job burn out (Dreison et al. 2018). The organization needs to increase its funds from any other sources, and a proper management skill needs to be implemented, so job dissatisfaction does not arise among the employers (Heponiemi et al. 2014). Shift-based working hours can be incorporated to reduce the stress level of the employees. Recruitment o more volunteers can enhance the situation (Thomas, 2016). If a shift based system is incorporated, the employees will be eligible for short working hours, thus reducing their stress levels and increasing job satisfaction (Patterson et al. 2018). Along with that participating in consultation activities, training programs will enhance the situation. Clear and good communication between the employees and the service providers can decrease the turnover rates. Three techniques that can enhance the situation of Animal Care if implemented are:

An Effective Hiring strategy

Compensation and Benefit Packages

Appreciation and Rewards

Along with this, a positive work environment increases employee engagement, develop skills and potential through any training program that contribute to job satisfaction.  Appreciation, mementos should be provided to the eligible employees every quarter (Policy,  2016). The organization employee welfare association should approach some recognized lawyer for Pro Bono ( handling the grave situation for the public good without any monetary return) who is ready to resolve the matter in philanthropic thought (Juergens and Galatowitsch,  2016).

Conclusion and Next Steps

From this essay, it can be concluded that nonprofit organizations are affected in a specific way by their mission, meaning, size, program goals and culture. Animal Care is a nationwide charity that aims at small animals and wildlife rehabilitation, recovery and rehoming of those animals. Animal Care works towards three targets that facilitate the recovery of animals who are hurt and damaged, rehoming or releasing animals and increasing animal and wildlife awareness through educational programs. This research focused on skills in presenting a proof-based method, understanding the need to build a positive and inclusive public image to find a solution and work with Animal Care and offering a brief, high-level project plan on how the proposals proposed will run side by side and/or sequentially. Few issues have been detected that prevail in Animal Care. The high incidence of mental health and welfare issues in the charity sector has been widely reported in the media, financing problems, and rising costs, lower funding, diminished government and business funding, increased cost-cutting has become. A vivid study has been done on a literature review which shows that work pressure increases the stress level and deteriorates mental health conditions. A study says that a decline in subjective health is associated with long hours of work, over-employment and underemployment. After analyzing the literature review, the formulation of the solution and the intervention have been provided. A recommendation has been provided to enhance the situation of Animal Care. Relevant tools and techniques have been provided that will help to overcome the drastic situation of the organization.

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