One Welfare

Recently, a woman visited our shelter’s pet food pantry. She had a small dog, gray around the muzzle, maybe twenty pounds. While we were grabbing her food, a team member asked her how she was doing. She mentioned that her rent had gone up, and that it was only made worse when her hours were cut at her job last week.

She came in for dog food. But what was actually going on in her life was quite a bit bigger than that. Everything is connected.

There’s a name for this. It’s called One Welfare, and it’s a framework that has received some attention in social science research over the past decade or so. The premise is relatively simple. Animal welfare, human well-being, and the broader social environment aren’t three separate concerns that occasionally intersect. They are, in essence, one congruent system, or One Welfare. Researchers behind the idea argue that we have separated them artificially. We’re sorting problems by their effects instead of their causes. And as a result, we end up treating the symptoms while potentially failing to see the bigger picture along the way.

This is a direction many shelters across the country have been going for over a decade now. Personally, I’ve helped multiple shelters like ours begin to understand our responsibility not just to the pets, but also the “other end of the leash.” Once you know what to look for, you see it constantly… and it is particularly clear to see in Southwest Florida.

Our Community

Here in Naples, our community is known worldwide for beautiful beaches, golf (of course) and our vibrant “Snowbird” season. That reputation isn’t wrong, but as we all know, it’s a simplified description that doesn’t really accurately represent our diverse community.

By geography, Collier County is one of the largest counties in the United States. Naples has a per-capita income roughly eight times Immokalee’s. Further, Immokalee’s poverty rate runs more than four times that of Naples’. These are two neighboring communities that sit about a half-hour apart. Both are in Collier County. Both have significantly different needs.

Digging deeper you’ll find that the United Way’s 2024 ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) report noted 40% of Collier County households couldn’t consistently afford basics like housing, food, transportation, and health care. Most of those households have someone working in them.

Age matters here too. More than a third of Collier residents (34.8%) are 65 or older, against 16.1% under 18. Roughly 30,000 of our seniors live alone. And 38% of households headed by someone 65 or older fall below that same ALICE threshold. These are seniors who not only live alone, but many are on fixed incomes and face rising healthcare expenses.

So, we serve a community that skews older, lives alone at high rates, and has little room for surprise, alongside the tens of thousands of working households who are in the same exact boat.

Our pets are family

Pew Research Center surveyed pet owners in 2023 and found that 97% consider their pets family. (We’d argue it’s 100% but we’re biased, of course.) But for families under financial pressure, every choice can be a negotiation. Hours, groceries, where you sleep, and of course, healthcare and doctors. Not just for the humans, but for the entire family (pets included).

In 2024, 52% of dog and cat owners either skipped a visit or declined at least one recommendation from their vet, according to a study by PetSmart Charities and Gallup. Among those owners, 71% cited financial reasons.

The woman at the pantry hadn’t taken her dog to a vet in over a year. She mentioned it almost in passing, the way you’d mention a chore you haven’t gotten around to doing quite yet.

But it wasn’t about convenience, it was about access to options. Households earning under $60,000 annually are most likely to avoid care because of affordability. Additionally, nearly half of that same group expressed interest in community clinics and similar low-cost options.

For seniors living alone, the story can cascade quickly. A hospitalization turns into an animal care emergency. Mobility becomes a restriction. A driver’s license that doesn’t get renewed, or a move into assisted living, creates additional problems for an already difficult situation. They’re eldercare struggles, they happen every day, and they show up at our door (and shelters like ours) all the time in the form of a surrender and intake.

All of the research and data points lead us to the same place. Animal care, eldercare, mobility, resources, human well-being, healthcare… they’re all connected. They’re one welfare.

We used to know this

While doing some research for this blog, I came across an interesting story from around 150 years ago. In 1874, a caseworker in New York found a girl named Mary Ellen Wilson being severely abused by the family she lived with. She went looking for an agency with the authority to intervene and discovered that nothing formal existed. Child protective services hadn’t been invented yet.

So, she went to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) instead, and the ASPCA’s founder, Henry Bergh, took the case.

The first prosecuted child abuse case in American history ran through an animal welfare organization. And child protection grew out of it. Henry Bergh, Elbridge Gerry (ASPCA’s legal counsel) and philanthropist John D. Wright founded The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children just a few months later.

Bergh didn’t avoid the case because it fell outside his mission. He took it because a child needed protection and he had the means to act.

But to be clear, this isn’t an argument against specialization. I’ve spent my career leading nonprofits, mostly in animal welfare but also in human and environmental services, and specialized organizations manage and distribute resources best when they have focus. That said, over those same years I’ve also learned truly how much overlap there is across needs, assistance, family and community.

Both ends of the leash

All of this leads to how we manage assistance and community resources here at Patty Baker Humane Society Naples.

Our Denny Plesea Pet Food Pantry exists to help families who need assistance with pet food, so they don’t have to make a choice about who eats at home. Our Compassionate Care fund exists to help provide low cost and subsidized options so a pet parent can have access to veterinary care. Our Community Resource Center exists to help provide resource access to people who want to keep their family together, but may need a little help along the way. We offer low-cost spay neuter clinics all across Southwest Florida, and help pet families make responsible decisions. We offer crisis boarding for victims of abuse or an unexpected crisis that may cause a family to consider surrendering their pet.

As an animal shelter, we’re here to help you find your next furry family member, but we’re also here to help keep that family together. Over the past year, we’ve made an active and deliberate choice to lean into these programs. Animal welfare is family assistance. Both ends of the leash. One Welfare.

For us, there really isn’t a difference between helping animals and helping the people who love them. We’re here to be that safety net. And PBHSN will continue to support our amazing pet-loving community, the pets and the families both, however we can.

If you’d like to support our Community Resource Program, you can make a financial donation online, or drop off items at our main shelter during normal business hours.