Abstract
Veterinary social work is a specialty field of social work practice that includes four focus areas: animal-related grief and bereavement, compassion fatigue and conflict management, the Link between human and animal violence, and animal-assisted interventions. The term “veterinary social work” was coined in 2002 at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UT), by second author of this chapter, Elizabeth B. Strand. This chapter describes the development of the UT Veterinary Social Work program and the subsequent development of the field of veterinary social work, describes the origins of the term “veterinary social work,” describes why the name “veterinary social work” was chosen, and provides perspectives from some early practitioners in the field.
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Notes
- 1.
For a detailed history of the development of the human-animal bond as a field, these authors suggest Hines’ 2003 article, Historical Perspectives on the Human-Animal Bond.
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Poe, B.A., Strand, E.B. (2022). History of Veterinary Social Work. In: Loue, S., Linden, P. (eds) The Comprehensive Guide to Interdisciplinary Veterinary Social Work. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10330-8_2
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