The Kerulos Center offers a number of services to sanctuaries, shelters, and others in the animal care community through our new program, Resilience and Engagement for Animal Care and Healing (REACH). Service to the animal care community is key to the 
Kerulos mission. We recognize that if animals are to be healed, we must also "heal the healer" by creating a trauma-sensitive culture in the workplace.
REACH is designed designed to help people who help animals. This program is tailored for the unique challenges faced by sanctuaries, shelters, clinics, conservation groups, and others in the animal care community.
Our goal is to cultivate organizational health and well-being for animals and people. Recently, we completed an online assessment of animal care organizations, Caring for the Caregiver: Assessment of Animal Care Professional and Organizational Wellbeing. This survey report analyzes many facets of animal caretakers and their organizations, and profiles the stressors both endure.
Re-igniting Resilience and Engagement
Animal care organizations are sometimes vulnerable to multiple sources of stress that undermine their ability to provide high quality care. In addition to the stress of caring for animals, people also contend with miscommunication, crisis, conflict, compassion fatigue, burnout, and grief. REACH builds organizational strength and resilience in three key areas:
- Leadership
- Conflict Transformation
- Crisis and Stress Management
REACH helps clients discover healthy, sustainable solutions by focusing creative energy on the emotional and relational dimensions underlying workplace issues.
The Kerulos Center's REACH program includes diverse activities to address the symptoms and causes of stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue. This is accomplished by restoring a positive state of well-being, specifically, resilience and engagement in the workplace. This can be accomplished most effectively when there is support from a trauma-sensitive workplace that heals the healer as well as other animals.
REACH Services
REACH programs and consultations are flexible and can be adapted to meet individual and organizations needs for crisis intervention or prevention. Our work together can be from a distance (phone, internet, webinar) or on-site (your place or ours).
Our services include online trainings, workshops, retreats, and individual coaching specifically tailored to prevent or heal burnout, compassion fatigue, and other stress-related problems. Our approach cultivates individual and organizational resilience to create new forms of self-care and self-nurturing.
How do I begin?
REACH uses a four-step protocol to guide our professional engagements with clients. Our services are based on cutting-edge research in leadership development and organizational health, including emotional fitness and resiliency, mindfulness-based practices, and work engagement. REACH is also “trauma-informed,” sensitive to the effects of traumatic stress in animals and the people who care for them.
The program offers individuals and groups a modular and flexible approach that can be tailored to specific needs. We work with directors, boards, managers, staff, and volunteers in a variety of modalities, on-site or distance, including consultations, coaching, trainings, workshops, retreats, and assessments.
The REACH program includes comprehensive and targeted services to help restore resilience and engagement in the workplace:
- Compassion Stress Management
- Re-igniting Engagement
- Communication for conflict management
- Leadership development and coaching
- Work-life balance
- Emotional fitness and resliency training
- Trauma-informed organizational change
- Risk assessment/management, decision support
- Strategic planning
- Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM)
- Mindfulness and mind-body training
REACH People
Kerulos faculty members Jeff Borchers, MS, PhD, LPC and Vera Muller-Paisner, LCSW are the principle providers for the REACH program. Both have extensive training and experience in organizational development, coaching, and psychotherapy. In addition, The Kerulos Center faculty has a breadth of knowledge and expertise of animal trauma and recovery, sanctuary design and management, and organizational development.
Our approach to this work is “trauma-informed” in that all services are informed about, and sensitive to, trauma in animals and the people who care for them. Our goal is to avoid re-traumatization by accommodating the vulnerabilities of trauma survivors—human or animal.
Contact The Kerulos Center for more information about the REACH program or to schedule an introductory consultation with one of our providers.
Sources
[1] Bloom, S.L. (2006). Organizational stress as a barrier to trauma-sensitive change and system transformation. Philadelphia: CommunityWorks.
photo credits
"Silver and Ann", courtesy Ann Southcombe
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"Science in service to animals"
