Pets in Care Homes: Can You Take Them?
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
For many elderly people, a beloved pet represents their most cherished companion, which is why parting ways when moving into a care home can be a hugely stressful and often traumatic experience.
Thankfully, quite a lot of care homes do accept pets, including residential care homes, allowing you and your furry friend to remain together. The question then, is how do you go about finding these pet-friendly care homes?
In this article, we’ve looked at whether or not you can take pets into a care home, how to find a pet-friendly care home, whether staff will help look after your pet and how visiting with a pet works.
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In this article
- Can you take pets to a care home?
- Where will your pet live in the care home?
- Finding a pet-friendly care home
- Can care home staff help you look after a pet?
- What happens to pets that you can’t take?
- Visiting with pets
- Do care homes have their own animals?
Can You Take Pets to a Care Home?
While some care homes are unable to accept pets for health and safety reasons, many across the UK welcome new residents bringing their pets!
Each home has its own, upfront policy on whether pets can stay or not. For a pet to be allowed to stay in a home, the care team need to know that you can look after them by yourself, or any necessary arrangements will be made to assist you if not, such as organising an external dog walker.
Pets are less likely to be found on a high-care needs unit, such as where residents are living with advanced dementia.
Whether your pet can stay will also depend on how suitable it would be to have it live amongst the other residents at that particular time. For example, they might not be able to stay if other residents have pet allergies or are scared of animals.
When residents who are pet owners move into a care home, a support plan is usually agreed upon with the pet(s) in mind. This will include what would happen if you become too ill to care for your pet. In this case, alternative arrangements would be drawn up and carried out (such as the pet being rehoused with a charity or a family member/friend).
Where Will Your Pet Live In the Care Home?
Your pet will either be able to live with you in your room, in the home’s garden or somewhere else in the home (depending on what kind of animal it is).
In some homes, you’ll find pets like dogs and cats freely roaming around, but this is very much down to the individual home.
Finding a Pet-Friendly Care Home
The Cinnamon Trust is a charity that helps elderly people with the care of their pets. With this in mind, they’ve compiled a national register of care homes and retirement villages in the UK that are pet-friendly.
A little over 50% of care homes in the UK describe themselves as pet-friendly, so you shouldn’t have to look for too long to find one that fits the bill!
Through Lottie, you can search for pet-friendly care homes. Each of our care home listings states whether or not pets are allowed.
Many of our care homes are pet-friendly. For example, Shinfield View in Berkshire is listed as a pet-friendly care home, as is Cumnor Hill House in Oxford.
We’re here to help you find the right care home for you or your loved one. You can request a free list of care homes from our care experts, who will then share homes matching your budget, location and type of care needed. You can also search for a pet-friendly care home through our easy-to-use directory.
Can Care Home Staff Help You Look After a Pet?
Many care homes are unlikely to let your pet stay if care staff will be needed to help look after them.
With that said, the staff at some care homes will support you with tasks like feeding, exercising, grooming and cleaning your pet. Depending on your needs, they’ll either do this for you or assist you in doing it yourself.
Another important task that care home staff may help out with is taking your pet to the vet and administering any medication that it needs. Before moving into a care home, you can discuss with the manager how your new home will support you in taking care of your pet. It may be that they’ll only take your pet on if you’re able to organise these things yourself.
What Happens to Pets That You Can’t Take?
Many charities will look after your pets if they aren’t able to stay with you in a care home. Similarly, there may be a family member or friend who is willing to look after your pet for you. Depending on how much time they have spare, they can then bring your furry friend in for regular visits.
Visiting With Pets
Even if pets aren’t allowed to permanently live there, many care homes will still grant permission for pets to make visits.
Similarly to having your pet live with you, care homes have individual policies about whether visiting is allowed. Whether your pet can visit is usually assessed on a case-by-case basis.
If visits are allowed, it might be worth trying to get a family member, friend or volunteer from a local charity to look after your pet and have it regularly visit you.
Do Care Homes Have Their Own Animals?
Care homes often have their own pets! You can find out if this is the case by enquiring when you visit a care home.
Dogs, cats, birds, rabbits and chickens are all full-time residents themselves of various care homes in the UK, bringing joy and laughter to their human counterparts.
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