Looking after our team

3rd July 2019

Our staff team at Oak Tree are quite simply amazing! Every single member of the team have one aligned vision - to get up in the morning to do their best for animals, they have immense compassion and empathy for animals and owners... but this can take it's toll.

It may surprise you to learn that, every day, one of our team will receive abuse and criticism for trying to do their best for the animals. We are sometimes, due to resources, space, legislation etc, unable to do what people think we should be able to. For our team, that is extremely hard, we all want to make a difference to animal lives, and while we get amazing rewards from the ones we are able to help and the fantastic people who support us, there will always be guilt and regret for the ones we are unable to help... and we are not alone.

In animal rescue work, compassion fatigue is well documented across our sector, leading to stress and anxiety and ultimately the loss of amazingly experienced and compassionate animal welfare professionals to other less emotional jobs. We were delighted to be able to come together with our partner charities Dumfries and Galloway Canine Rescue and Animal Rescue Cumbria to learn how to best protect our teams from the effects of compassion fatigue. Huge thanks to Fiona from Dumfries and Galloway for inviting us, it's amazing when we can all work together to make a huge difference for animal welfare in our region.