Animal-assisted wellbeing
Exclusive to The Unconditional Love Foundation, our Animal Connections program connects young people and adults with our wellbeing dogs in schools and community settings.
Program participants spend quality, fully supervised time engaging with our friendly dogs to:
- Promote positive emotional and mental health
- Boost confidence and communication
- Enhance concentration, self-regulation and learning ability
- Build strong relationships and social connections
- Engender empathy
By combining evidence-based, trauma-informed practices with hands-on animal learning and engagement experiences, we aim to create wellbeing benefits for people and animals through increases in knowledge, skill development and inter-species empathy.
“School students who attend our program tell us they feel happier after engaging with our wellbeing dogs. They tell us having our dogs in their classroom helps them feel more relaxed and gives them something to look forward to.”
Leah Munnery
Program leader
Our program is far more than patting a dog, although that is a wonderful place to start.
The wellbeing benefits of connecting with animals are profound.
A happy, healthy relationship between people and dogs especially, can reduce stress and provide a sense of connection and belonging.
Our program delivers a range of proactive and responsive animal-assisted interventions to support the emotional, social and mental wellbeing of young people and adults in need. Wellbeing dogs boost joy, create calm and invoke empathy, while encouraging emotional literacy, communication, self-confidence and self-regulation - all with a wag!
Through our Animal Connections program, we invite young people and adults to experience a more compassionate world by connecting with our wellbeing dogs.
Some of the groups we have been fortunate to partner with include:
- Children experiencing disadvantage
- School children with development and learning difficulties
- Students experiencing emotional and mental health challenges
- Youths experiencing social disconnection and isolation
- University students experiencing acute stress
- Young adults experiencing drug and alcohol dependence
- Older adults experiencing grief and loneliness
We also support First Nations, migrant and refugee communities, those experiencing family violence and people living with disability.
Discover our program
Creating real impact
In 2022, we connected close to 2,000 young people and adults with our wellbeing dogs in classrooms and communities across Victoria.