Safe Pets Safe Families

Compassionate friendly people who helped me and my fur baby during the heatwave.

It is with deep regret that I have to share that this organisation has caused me and my family more harm than good.To be transparent, we did receive support from a dog walker volunteer who came a few times a week to walk our dog for a few months and this was much appreciated, hence the second star rating.Initially and subsequently, it has been very difficult to get hold of this charity and receive any adequate response. However, we did try to call several times as was suggested and were lucky to get hold of the founder one day. By that time, we had several avenues of support available to us, but after a few apparently lovely conversations, we were told that Safe Pets Safe Families could provide us with all that support and were offered more beyond that (dog training, foster care, doggy daycare once a week and local socialization opportunities).Unfortunately, these promises were misleading. We trusted what we were told and let go of the other avenues we’d found.We did receive a couple of dog training sessions provided by their ‘approved’ provider. However, no one bothered to read the mammoth 33 pages of forms which we were required to complete, and the training provided completely disregarded our needs, with the trainer knowing nothing of our issues. After a lengthy conversation and basic training which we were already doing competently, we were told we would need to book another session to address the issues (our puppy was traumatized by our family crisis situation and had become reactive). Unfortunately, the second session was a repeat experience of the first.Things came to a head when we shared our concerns with both the provider and the charity, once again sharing the ongoing challenges my family is facing. The charity provider responded with a flippant one sentence response which showed a total lack of care for our crisis situation and the experience we had with their ‘approved’ training provider. No resolution to this was offered and the charity paid for the services.This leaves us questioning; why is an organisation paying a provider for services that did not address the needs of their client? Why are they not advocating for the client to ensure that they are indeed helped in time of need? These questions can only leave you wondering whether there are any conflicts of interest at play, which feels simply awful to say, but it feels like the only conclusion that can be drawn from our experience.We tried on many occasions to chase up the support we were promised, but were never responded to again. You can only chase a charity up so many times before you feel like a horrible person, but we had by this time declined all other offers of support. Four months after our initial contact with Safe Pets Safe Families, we are in further stress and without the support promised to us. Now we are once again faced with having to find alternative options with the limited resources we have.It is totally understandable if this organisation is inundated and unable to offer support, but it needs to communicate that clearly to clients and not lead people on. Unfortunately, this organisation has not only failed in its mission & objectives, but it has done the opposite and left a family in crisis in even deeper stress and without a support system. It doesn’t take much to set up an auto response to messages and it is certainly uncalled for to lead people on with promises of support that they are unable to fulfill.It appears that we are not alone in our experience and I would highly suggest that this charity reviews their mission, objectives and guidelines for offering support.

You looked after my Harvey very well thankyou

Such a beautiful family of volunteers helping people stay with their pets

No answer to phone calls, Facebook messages, applied for foster care a week ago, eviction next week. Even wrote directly to the Founder and CEO on linkedIn, still nothing. Not sure if this organisation is operating, though internet presence indicates a lot of recent promotions and fundraising activity. Caused us more distress than if we had just looked elsewhere for a solution to our problem given our very limited timeframe (now 6 days remaining out of 14) to save our dog from homelessness.I will gladly amend this review if somebody there does something or even at least just responds to acknowledge our messages, phone calls and application. Thank youUpdate (1 day): We have had a sequence of completely disjointed / disconnected responses from the admin officer; without reference to previous contact and our application, including sending us back around to the unattended crisis line. Rating is maintained at 1 star, despite a response given, as the nature of the response is totally unhelpful and disturbing, giving no clarity or relief if or when any support or assistance will be given, as well as lowering our confidence even further. 5 days remaining.Update (2 days): Confirmed via a friend in their foster carer's network that details of our dog have been distributed last night. Great news, thank you; but still no proper response to us yet. Upgraded to 3 stars pending a clear response with update today. Thanks again, much appreciated.Update (3 days): There had still been no official communication received, while we found our own solution independently. Our crisis has now been averted. The only way we knew that anything had been done to help is via unofficial information from our friend in the foster carers' network. 90 minutes after we advised the organisation that we had found our own solution, we received a communication that potential foster carers had expressed interest in helping us. Thank you.Final comments:Overall for our singular experience of this organisation, we would have been better not having engaged at all to apply for assistance, with wasted time applying, following up and fielding a disjointed eMail dialogue 2 days ago which drew our attention away from looking for a temporary foster carer through our own social networks 8 days earlier.The absence of communication regarding our application for 8 days was unacceptable and resulted in my partner being extremely distressed as well as our dog's well being potentially deteriorating unnecessarily over the same period of delay. As this organisation is particularly committed to helping with crises such as domestic violence based cases, it is unthinkable what could occurred in a worse situation for others who could not find their own solution, as we did.Although we appreciate and are grateful for the effort to reach out to their network of foster carers two days ago and finding interested carers within their network, we are surprised that our sensitive information that we provided for the purpose of justifying our need for charity assistance was distributed within their private group. We were not made aware that this sensitive information would be fully shared as a copy and paste or that we understand why this was necessary to publicise private and confidential information about our application.Although our experience has not been positive, I'm sure this charity has the best intentions and so it is important moving forward that lessons be learnt and improvements put into practice to communicate properly with applicants who are vulnerable in a crisis or extreme hardship. Also privacy of sensitive personal and confidential information needs to be reviewed and applied with intake and searching for foster care. Please improve your communication and handling of applicant privacy as a matter of urgency and provide a full summary report to the charity's Board of Directors for governance and oversight.We genuinely and sincerely wish Safe Pets Safe Families well in the future and thank you for your effort.

Thank you to Safe Pets Safe Families for a great outcome for my dog Alf. Alf is now in Foster Care and the case manager has sent me photos of him settling in to his temporary foster home. I've loved seeing the photos of him, as they help me feel better about the whole situation. I'm very grateful for this organisation and the amazing people who help make it all possible.

Safe Pets Safe Famillies provided compassionate support when I needed emergency vet care for my cat. It took a litte while to get through but it is because they are in high demand. The distress I was under, while I also had Covid & couldn't earn much needed funds for the vet, brought up trauma. A volunteer gave amazing support for my cat for over 10 days back and forth to the vet. Both she & Jennifer Howard gave me time, accessed financial support and listened sympathetically while I poured out the problems the grief and worry over my cat triggered. My cat would not be here today without this support. This is a charity under pressure to help so many in crisis for all sorts of reasons and they really work hard. I am grateful for the amazing help I received. I highly recommend SPSF.

I was referred here by a friend who has used this charity in the past and also by my social worker. My mother had been rushed to hospital and left in her home 2 senior cats. Unfortunately I cannot look after them due to my own personal circumstances and mum would not want to surrender them and want them back when she is well again. I reached out to these people by messaging them on Messenger and leaving my number for them to contact me back. After a day with no response I found their phone number and tried calling. It rings a few times then you get the notification that 'mailbox is full'. As I could see they had 'seen' my Messenger message I wrote another saying please it's urgent".... They then blocked me!!!!!!Disgraceful! I can no longer access their Facebook page yet my friends can??!!!! If you are so busy then all you need to do is simply write a nice message back saying- We apologize but at the moment we are at capacity and are unable to help you at this time'....If you can't run a charity nicely then DONT RUN A CHARITY. Learn some customer service skills please.Absolutely unacceptable

Supporting families and pets, in times of need. This charity helps keeps, families, singles, and their pets together. When you need help, or need to, but want to not loose, or leave pets behind, your furry family gets help too. The best people helping pets and people.