Effectiveness & Results
As the nation’s historical leader in child and animal protection, American Humane Association continually assesses and strategizes to meet new goals in child and animal welfare.
We have a multitude of programs that each address issues that can make children and animals vulnerable -- from chronic child neglect, to absentee fathers, to poor farming animal welfare, to animal abuse and cruelty. We focus every day on how our nation’s systems, policies and practices can be improved to create a more humane and compassionate world.
Goals
Each program within American Humane Association is led as an individual initiative with distinct budgets, objectives, goals and outcomes. Program leaders are accountable for ensuring their programs operate to budget, respect donor intent and meet anticipated outcomes.
Strategy
Because our programs are vast and often complex, strategies for each vary. Our strategy may involve calling on colleagues in the child and animal welfare field to collaborate for maximum effectiveness (e.g., disaster response, child welfare conferences), or it may involve acting as the primary lead in training and education (e.g., animal-assisted therapy, Pets and Women’s Shelters [PAWS]® Program). However, with all strategic decisions at American Humane Association, program leaders rely on inclusiveness, collaboration, teamwork, effective project management and communication to meet our goals in child and animal welfare.
Capacity
To implement our strategies and meet these goals, American Humane Association has expert program leaders in child welfare, animal welfare and human-animal interactions, as well as farm animal welfare, emergency services and animal-assisted therapy. We are headquartered in Washington, D.C., and have offices in Englewood, Colo., Alexandria, Va., and Los Angeles, where our Film & TV Unit (“No Animals Were Harmed”®) coordinates its efforts. Supporting our programs are a full-service marketing and communications department, an interactive media department and professional partnerships and working relationships with thousands of child and animal welfare agencies and professionals across the country.
Measuring Progress
As with our program goals, each program leader at American Humane Association is charged with determining and implementing standards and methods of evaluation within their programs. Evaluation is built into every program component, so that we continually monitor our effectiveness and ensure we are best meeting our goals.
Reporting Success
Finally, imperative to our Board, management, staff, and -- importantly -- our volunteers, supporters, partners, and donors, is realizing and understanding our impact on vulnerable children and animals. We report our success on individual projects via grant reports and communications to foundations, corporations and individuals.
We also make readily available to the public our financial information, Annual Report and highlights of achievements. Compiled here are several accomplishments from our fiscal year 2009 that are also highlighted in our Form 990.
American Humane Association is the only national organization dedicated to protecting both children and animals from abuse and neglect. Founded in 1877, American Humane Association provides national leadership in developing policies, legislation, curricula and training programs -- and providing direct services -- to fulfill its mission. Following is a summary of key activities and specific accomplishments during the fiscal year (July 1, 2008, through June 30, 2009). For details about these programs, and more, please visit www.americanhumane.org.
ANIMAL PROTECTION DIVISION
Rescuing animals from disasters, giving abused and neglected pets a second chance at life, supporting local animal shelters and their staff, and making sure “No Animals Were Harmed”® on television and movie sets are among the activities of our Animal Protection Division. American Humane’s Red Star Animal Emergency Services™ responded to six major incidents and rescued and/or sheltered more than 2,300 animals in situations that included flooding in Illinois and Iowa; Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in Louisiana and Texas; and several states’ requests for support of puppy mill and hoarding case seizures.
We delivered 108 specialized training courses in shelter operations, shelter management, euthanasia technician certification, cruelty investigations and disaster planning and response, training more than 2,100 people in 28 states.
We provided $282,000 in grants to 260 local animal shelters, rescues and community animal emergency response organizations in 44 states to help increase pet adoptions, increase support for spay/neuter programs, decrease euthanasia of healthy and treatable animals, rescue and treat animal victims of abuse and neglect, and provide emergency support in the wake of natural disasters.
Our Film & TV Unit updated American Humane’s Guidelines for the Safe Use of Animals in Filmed Media to reflect new animal science and behavioral studies, as well as current film industry technology, and began distributing 9,000 copies to all productions that use animals and to other industry stakeholders. Our Certified Animal Safety Representatives™ supervised 95.6 percent of intense animal action on domestic Screen Actors Guild (SAG) productions. Our overall coverage of animal action on domestic SAG productions, the number of scripts read, the number of ratings issued, and the number of disclaimers awarded were all higher than in the preceding year. Many studios, including Disney, Paramount, Warner Bros. and FOX, increased their involvement with American Humane, significantly augmenting our public relations efforts at no cost to us. Beverly Hills Chihuahua carried special American Humane messaging, and a broad range of efforts (e.g., adoption events and distribution of fliers about adopting pets) was provided by FOX for Marley & Me. Collaboration with TV networks included a campaign with WB and TNT around a subplot of The Closer dealing with the death of a pet, compassionate care and guardian grief.
The American Humane® Certified farm animal program provides third-party, independent verification that producers’ care and handling of farm animals meet the science-based animal welfare standards of American Humane Association. We increased the total number of animals covered from 5 million to more than 135 million and the number of farms covered from 40 to more than 5000. Our program now covers 90 percent of the U.S. cage-free egg producers, and the largest liquid egg producer, Michaels Foods, is accepting only American Humane Certified cage-free eggs.
CHILDREN’S DIVISION
Our Children’s Division provides leadership, expertise, funding, training, research and evaluation to prevent abuse and neglect of children. The 21 teams (representing urban, rural and tribal child welfare systems across the country) in the Breakthrough Series Collaborative on Safety and Risk Assessments, using a methodology for continuous quality improvement, conducted 342 small tests of change, have studied the results of 235 and considered 117 for expanding to larger system change to enhance safety and risk assessments and decision making in the child welfare system. Notable practice changes include: engaging families in the assessment process as early as possible, co-creating safety plans with families and engaging children in the safety planning process, searching for natural supports (e.g., fathers or extended families), incorporating the family’s culture into developing solutions, and engaging in preventive measures. When measures are compared across the whole collaborative, the number of re-referrals to child protective services has dropped, and family participation in meetings has increased.
In partnership with the Colorado Department of Human Services, Division of Child Welfare, we launched the Colorado Disparities Resource Center to address longstanding issues of service disparities in child welfare based on race and ethnicity, with the goal of reducing disparities in the provision of child welfare services to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)-eligible families of color. This Colorado work could well become a national model for addressing such disparities.
On the Ohio Alternative Response Project, 10 pilot counties are participating in designing an alternative response system to accepted reports of alleged child maltreatment. More than 4,000 families have participated in the study and 150 staff were trained. Feedback on the project includes: greater receptivity and cooperation of families with an alternative response approach, increased community awareness and collaboration, and a newfound capacity to meet the needs of families with substantive services. The National Quality Improvement Center on Differential Response in Child Protective Services, through research design and implementation, was initiated to improve child welfare outcomes by implementing differential response, to build knowledge about differential response, to enhance capacity at the local level to improve outcomes for children and families identified for suspected abuse or neglect, and to provide guidance on best practices.
The four research sites selected by the Quality Improvement Center on Non-Resident Fathers and the Child Welfare System (fathers who do not live with their children) served 51 non-resident fathers and their children. A social worker curriculum and a curriculum for attorneys who represent non-resident fathers have been developed and are being piloted.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) chose American Humane Association’s Child Protection Research Center and our partner, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, to work on cross-national household surveys. UNICEF has awarded more than $45,000 to our team to analyze levels of violent discipline in 33 countries. Our work will result in recommendations for improving the measurement of child discipline in future surveys and will contribute to global policies that may help prevent more serious child maltreatment.
HUMAN-ANIMAL BOND DIVISION
This division advances society’s understanding of the power and implications of the relationships between people and animals. Our Animal-Assisted Therapy teams positively impacted approximately 90,000 lives through our 200 trained, skilled volunteer handler/animal teams and expanded to 50 facilities, including a homeless shelter, a state psychiatric center, an HIV clinic and a juvenile correctional facility. Our volunteers logged approximately 22,000 hours of visits last year with their animals, consisting primarily of dogs, plus three cats, a horse and two guinea pigs. Our teams enhanced lives in many ways, including helping an autistic child speak his first words in the classroom, giving a man the courage to have a leg amputation, and building trust with an adolescent so he can finally talk about his anger.
Our Pets and Women’s Shelters (PAWS)® Program grew from eight shelters to 25 (with seven more in progress) and celebrity Paula Abdul became a pro-bono spokesperson for the program.
Our new educational packet, American Humane KIDS: Kids Interacting with Dogs Safely™, was well-received, and Proctor & Gamble awarded us a $20,000 grant to produce more (including a Spanish version) for distribution to communities in need. The materials will be part of a project in Washington, D.C., for at-risk kids in a new federally funded program, and our humane education staff will provide the training for teachers and City Year volunteers. Our partnership with Florida Gulf Coast University has produced many projects designed to inform students and the community about issues relating to companion animals and wildlife. The honors students’ “American Humane Association Service Teams” continue to expand their reach into the community -- more than 50 students participate in local projects, including volunteering at animal shelters, a wildlife rehabilitation clinic and an animal sanctuary.
We took the leadership role in the National Link Coalition, which serves to educate and provide resources to professionals and communities on The Link® between violence to people and violence to animals.
ADVOCACY
We actively monitor, draft and advocate for legislation that protects children and animals from abuse and neglect. We issued 107 state and 10 federal Action Alerts via email that spurred participation by thousands of people nationwide to urge their elected officials to support our positions. Of the bills we advocated for, 16 passed and were signed into law and three more were awaiting governors’ signatures. Also, through our participation in the National Child Abuse Coalition, we were successful in obtaining legislative language in the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act reauthorization to include differential response.
PUBLIC AWARENESS
One of American Humane Association’s key goals is the broad public dissemination of information to encourage humane behavior and prevent abuse. We successfully promoted and publicized national observances such as our Be Kind to Animals Week®, National Child Abuse Prevention Month and others. Our national public service advertising campaign on television, radio, the internet and billboards, which focused on preventing and intervening in the abuse of both children and animals, was launched and, in one year’s time, the campaign had generated donated media airtime and space valued at $13.4 million and had generated an estimated 968.7 million audience impressions.
