I would like to talk to you today about KPETS, which stands for Keystone Pet Enhanced Therapy Services, is a local non-profit that has been growing at an exponential rate. They are touching lives and warming hearts across South Eastern/Central PA and Northern MD.
KPETS is a network of dependable registered therapy teams committed to providing therapeutic benefits through the use of animals to physically, emotionally and mentally challenge people from all walks of life. They are touching the lives and the warming hearts of our community.
KPETS was founded in 2003 by Karen Gerth. Their services are provided on a volunteer basis and there is never a fee, although donations both monetary and skilled are greatly appreciated and needed.
They started as a small group with a church, and soon realized there were so many people wanting to do this type of volunteering that they expanded their outreach by forming KPETS and becoming a non-profit organization. They also found that the national therapy pet organizations could not keep up with the registration process or offer teams the personal attention at the level they desired, and at that point they acquired their our own registration process and insurance coverage.
The challenges KPETS face ly in of new and existing facilities requesting animal therapy visits. The results of their work is so evident to the staff, patients and their families, that they constantly need to bring in new waves of committed volunteers to keep up with the high demand. The challenge they face today is not enough time on the clock to meet all facility requests.
KPETS spends administrative hours matching volunteers with facilities based on their location and preferred setting and type of therapy work. There are always different types of volunteer work available if a volunteer decides to try something new.
The areas of improvement identified in my diagnostic research were improvement in their orientation with potential volunteers and a social media presence. KPETS needed to make a few fundamental changes in the way their administrative system was operating.
What was currently in place was an out-dated website, another site with a forum that not surprisingly had no posts on it in years and another website with a calendar of events. This was causing their very part time staff of 2 people administrative chaos. AND Their volunteers needed a user friendly site that was interactive and had everything in one place.
The merge took several days to move all calendar appointments over, provide addresses and maps of facilities for volunteers and to change the set-up for consistency on all levels of the site. KPETS was lucky enough to have won a contest for Pennsylvania College of Art & Design to re-do their website, which is looking phenomenal and is almost finished.
The orientation power point was completely re-vamped. Slides that were too wordy and repetitive were cut out. The founder was very open to change and because of that the presentation looks and feels brand new and improved to attract new dedicated volunteers.
With these social media changes, KPETS is now set up for volunteer success. Volunteers are able to easily access and post on a forum with local volunteers. They are able to meet new people with similar interests.
The testimonials of patients whose lives have improved as a direct result of KPETS team pet therapy are not only heartwarming but life changing for the patients. KPETS visited a boy with Attention Deficiet Disorder, he had immense trouble focusing on anything. His therapist had tried to have him trace a maze on a whiteboard with his finger and a cheerio, and even that was too much for him to handle.
Enter KPETS therapy dog. Keeping the same maze and telling the child that if he traced the dry erase maze without getting any marker on the cheerio, he could feed it to the dog’s mouth that was waiting at the other end of the maze.
The young boy sat and focused and took his time, so as not to get any marker on the cheerio. He really did want to be able to give the dog a cheerio. After that visit, his self esteem went up and it continued to increase with each pet therapy visit.
Patients in a hospitalized setting who have had a stroke sometimes lose control of their left arm. This can be frustrating for the patient and be monotonous to do traditional therapy methods.
Physical therapy patients can benefit their range of motion by brushing the dog, throwing a ball for the dog with the weakest arm, and even just petting the dog in general. This lifts their spirits and gives them something to look forward to.
KPETS even helps Speech therapy patients. By having the patient give simple commands such as SIT, they can challenge themselves. Patients want to succeed not only for themselves but for the dogs. Patients that were having trouble with these commands began to succeed in a short amount of time.
Who knew that improving reading scores could be as simple as having children read to the dogs? Children became excited to go to the library, and they spent more time outside of the therapy visit reading, to be ready for the dogs next time.
After working with KPETS I can see how valuable their services are to the community with the variety of therapy visits their teams take on. The community is provided valuable resources that are of great value.
After completing the service learning project with KPETS, and seeing first hand the amazing things they do with such little administrative support, I have decided to continue to volunteer my time on the business/strategy side of things. The founder is thrilled and I could not be happier to be helping such a worthy organization.
