About Paws for Support
Overview
Paws For Support is a unique charity dedicated to using highly trained dogs to improve people’s lives in the bailiwick of Guernsey.
These dogs will be used in a wide variety of situations from schools and young people to visiting the elderly in care homes. The dogs help bring happiness to people’s lives, assist in teaching respect, kindness, love, responsibility, friendship and trust. This is achieved by using our Paws for Support dogs as educational and therapeutic aids and assistance.
All Paws for Support dogs will all be highly trained and have been rigorously assessed ensuring that they are competent and safe to work in the specific environment they are to work in.
Visiting school dogs will need to pass - 2 assessments.
The individual school therapy dogs, school therapy dogs and assistance dogs will pass 4 assessments.
Once certified in their chosen environment the dogs will be annually re-assessed to make sure they continue to work at the high standard expected by Paws for Support.
All dogs working in schools in the bailiwick of Guernsey will have to be in training with PFS or have past at least the level 2 assessment - this is now written in the 'Dogs in School' education policy.
How Paws for Support works
All the PFS dogs in training are offered regular training sessions with our dedicated trainers (see Our Trainers page to find out more about them). We have a closed Facebook group where members can share successes, ask questions, post videos and watch training videos. This shared platform encourages all our members to work together and it sets high standards.
Becoming a Member
We welcome all breeds and types of dogs and encourage people to start as early as possible if they are interested in training a therapy or assistance dog; we will consider older dogs. We also offer puppy choosing advice and are open to discussing the benefits of different breeds. We run regular new members meetings, so if you are interested in finding out more, please get in touch.
Guernsey Community Awards
Charity of the Year 2019
We were proud to be awarded Charity of the Year 2019 at the Guernsey Community Awards held by the Guernsey Community Foundation. The award was kindly sponsored by State Street. A big congratulations to all the shortlisted nominees and to Bowel Cancer Guernsey and Guernsey Society of Cancer Relief who were also shortlisted in our category.
