Cherished Pets exists to deliver veterinary care social services that enable a flourishing human-animal bond to create inclusive, socially connected and sustainable communities and help end cycles of disadvantage linked to veterinary care in Australia.

To achieve our goal of a thriving human-animal bond for all, Cherished Pets works at two levels:

1. Directly supporting all people with companion animals with accessible and equitable veterinary care to enable the benefits of a thriving human-animal bond

2. At a systems change level we deliver integrated human and animal welfare services to ensure both companion animals and people’s health, wellbeing, and economic opportunity are more just, inclusive, and effective.

Our direct services and systems change interventions connect and complement each other to create wide-scale change underpinned by the benefits of the human-animal bond.

Cherished Pets works at a direct services level to provide accessible and equitable veterinary care to all people and their companion animals, and a systems change level to create integrated human and animal welfare services and solutions that support the human-animal bond.

Seeing systems is the first step to changing systems and Cherished Pets has developed solutions and evidence of impact supporting people and their pets. We’ve identified that society needs services that work at the intersection of human and animal health and we need to offer solutions to alleviate the significant challenges impacting vulnerable and disadvantaged people who have companion animals.

Our vantage point has uncovered that by enhancing the health and wellbeing of pets and their owners, it contributes to the economic wellbeing of communities, mitigates strain on human and animal welfare organisations, and supports social cohesion. 

Our adoption of a systems change approach is deeply rooted in our belief that inequalities exist because the animal and human welfare systems are not interconnected, and therefore fail to provide the necessary veterinary care and social support for all people and their pets.

We believe that sharing information and skills multiplies impact. Through our first Roundtable in November 2023 we asked our network across the animal and human social service sectors to consider their vision for interconnected social and veterinary services centered around the human-animal bond.

We have gained momentum, with 36 Social Hearted community partners and 50 individuals at the first Roundtable, each collaborating and advocating for systemic solutions to the social problems we see.

We aim to expand our collaborations, convene workshops, research, measurement, catalyse government interest and support, and unlock philanthropic capital.

The following organisations are some of the participants at the first Roundtable:

Download Roundtable Paper

The power of collaboration is immense and the problems we seek to solve are too big to tackle alone.

The human and animal support services sectors urgently need to break out of our siloes and increase our collective ambition to support the health and wellbeing of pets and their owners to contribute to the economic wellbeing of communities, mitigate strain on human and animal welfare organisations, and support healthier, socially connected communities.

We need to achieve equity by providing tailored support to address the unique challenges faced by marginalised people with pets and rectify systemic issues to ensure equal access to services and opportunities for support.

By working together and finding innovative ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of combined animal welfare and human welfare services and support, we can better target services to those most in need. This ensures that high quality service provision is accessible, affordable and equitable for all Australians and leads to improved outcomes for individuals, companion animals, and the economy.

The time is now

More than ever, the time is now to create a better world by enabling a flourishing human-animal bond.

We invite values-driven, ambitious partners and donors to help us deepen our approach, expand our model, measure our collective impact, encourage new donors, support our engagement with government, and grow our capacity to enable sustained, systems-level change.

We have a bold and appropriate strategy for supporting all people in crisis and pets at risk with pathways out of disadvantage - but we need funding.

Please join us.

Express your interest to join our Roundtable Mailing List by contacting Alicia (Lissi) Kennedy alicia@cherishedpetcare.com.au

Thank you to our sponsors for their generous support in furthering our mission.