2.1 Participatory Welfare Needs Assessment

QUICK LINKS
2.1.1 ANALYSE ANIMAL WELFARE NEEDS AND IDENTIFY INDICATORS FOR ASSESSING THE EXTENT THEIR NEEDS ARE MET
2.1.2 CONDUCT PARTICIPATORY WELFARE NEEDS ASSESSMENT TO UNDERSTAND THE WELFARE STATUS OF ANIMALS WITHIN THE COMMUNITY
HELPFUL TOOLS AND RESOURCES

Below is an overview of the community action planning process covered by steps within the planning phase of the community development approach:

Beginning with a participatory welfare needs assessment (PWNA) helps put the animal itself to the centre of the group’s analysis by looking at the present welfare status of their animal/s. This process sensitizes owners to their animals’ needs and feelings and the ways in which these are expressed through an animal’s behaviour or body language.

Follow the steps laid out below and use the recommended PLA tools to encourage participation and engagement with the community members interested in collaborating with the project. This stage should be used to create awareness and understanding of animal welfare needs and issues, and the motivation to address them through the development of action plans and monitoring of animal welfare over time. As a facilitator you will find the resources of 2. Essential communication skills for promoting behaviour change, 3. Guidance on Listening for Change Talk and 9. Example of Five Domains of Animal Welfare for Donkeys Linked to Human Behaviours useful for this stage.

Use the methods in this section to conduct and record data for a baseline assessment to determine:

1. The percentage of people who (do not) practice the promoted behaviours.
2. The existing pre-conditions (identified barriers/motivators) for practicing the desired behaviour (e.g. people’s knowledge, availability of resources).
3. Animal welfare indicators if an animal welfare assessment was not conducted at the start of the project initiation phase.

Having recorded a baseline of where animal welfare and associated husbandry and management practices are before any intervention enables assessment of the extent of behaviour change during monitoring and evaluation.

2.1.1 Analyse animal welfare needs and identify indicators for assessing the extent their needs are being met

The focus of this step is to support the group in building a common understanding of welfare based on the five domains. It will also enable them to recognize how aspects of good welfare and poor welfare are expressed by animals’ appearance and behaviour by facilitating the group’s analysis of how animals feel and what they need for their well-being.

In this section you will facilitate the group to:

• Identify the needs of animals.
• Analyse how far the animals’ needs are being met by everyone involved with their care regime.
• Analyse the effects on animals when their basic needs are not fulfilled.
• Identify the physical and behavioural signs of each need.

Organize a group meeting and facilitate the group to identify animal welfare needs and what it looks like when these needs are not met. To start the process of discussing animal needs, consider using Animal body mapping (T20) where the group identify welfare issues and their perceived causes on a drawing of their animals’ bodies and discuss what they perceive to be good and bad indicators of welfare. The Thriving not surviving (T18), and Animal feeling analysis (T19) tools can help to examine how the animal may experience life and how people can influence those emotions both positively and negatively. ‘If I were an animal’ (T17) may then help the community to determine to what extent animal needs are being met within the community and can support identification of welfare issues, indicators they can use and any knowledge gaps.

A list of an animal’s welfare needs will be developed by the group during these exercises and information to assist this process can also be found in the Animal Welfare and Communities Learning Module Part 1: Understanding animal welfare. These tools help to move people from looking at solely animal-related resources and services to observing the animal directly and seeing what animals can tell them about their own needs. They put the animal at the centre of analysis. Support group members in coming to common agreement on what they perceive to be good animal welfare and animal husbandry and management practices within their local context.

To support this process, consider populating a five domains framework with their animals’ needs and the equivalent human behaviours that would support meeting them, like the example provided in the facilitator resource 9. Example of Five Domains of Animal Welfare for Donkeys Linked with Human Behaviours. It is important to support the group in defining a list that represents all aspects of animal welfare not just those signs of physical welfare. Ask probing questions to encourage them to think about observable indicators of their animals’ welfare in terms of the five domains of animal welfare (e.g. nutrition, health, environment, behaviour, and mental state).

Next the group need to agree on how these animal- and resource or behaviour-based indicators will be scored to enable assessment of animal welfare and monitoring of changes. Participants write or draw the indicators as a list that can be used for assessing their own animals. The group then comes to a consensus on how each indicator will be scored and decide the exact definition for each score. Refer to the Animal Welfare Transect Walk (T22) instructions for determining scoring. The simplest scoring uses a traffic light system, over time communities will often shift to a more complex numerical system as the group builds experience and confidence assessing their animals’ welfare.

2.1.2 Conduct participatory welfare needs assessment to understand the welfare status of animals within the community

Facilitate the group to assess the welfare status of an animal, by looking at the physical condition of its body and observation of its behaviour. The Animal feeling analysis (T19) and Animal body mapping (T20) tools are helpful here. Identify things that may directly or indirectly affect the welfare of their animals (also refer to previous community needs assessment section 1.2). These include management practices, owner behaviour, resources, stakeholders and the environment, the Animal welfare practice gap analysis (T21) will assist here.

With the group, assess the level or severity of various welfare problems and their contributing factors. Conduct another Animal welfare transect walk (T22) now the community has greater awareness of how to assess animal welfare. This transect can be undertaken by men, women or both together, this process allows exploration of animal welfare conditions and assesses the realities of resources available within the community. The process of joint analysis leads to individual as well as collective action and increases understanding of the need for change and helps support people’s progress through the stages of change from pre-contemplation to the preparation stage.

Once completed, convene the group to sit together and summarise the findings on a chart to draw conclusions. If the walk has been carried out on more than one day, it is useful to hold a group discussion at the end of each day, with a final meeting on the last day of the exercise. The group summarizes the findings for each individual animal and for all the animals together. In particular, the group draws out the indicators that scored red (bad condition), for individual animals and for the village all together. This will generate a list of welfare issues for prioritizing during the next step of community action planning. As community members score themselves during the participatory welfare needs assessment, community facilitators can probe and listen for change talk to gauge different individual’s stages of change.

Link to References Cited