Introduction: The Human-Animal Bond describes the reciprocal relationship between humans and animals that brings love, companionship, comfort, and emotional support. As 62% of Australian households are home to one or more registered animal companions, the likelihood that social workers will need an awareness of this bond is high (Animal Medicines Australia, 2016). The Human-Animal Bond is especially strong in vulnerable people, such as women experiencing, or at risk of homelessness with a companion animal (Irvine, 2013; Labrecque & Walsh, 2011). There has been a companion animal ‘turn’, or awareness in the mainstream media and community about the need for consideration of all members of interspecies families impacted by family violence and homelessness. What is less known is how this turn is playing out in the field of social work. Despite recommendations that the awareness of the Human-Animal Bond be incorporated into companion animal-inclusive practice being made in social work literature, there is, to date, no documented evidence that this is happening in Australian social work. Anecdotally, there is a culture of covert, or subversive practices that has emerged to address this problem, in particular with the provision of social work to women experiencing, or at risk of homelessness.
Methodology: Adopting a Feminist Ethic of Care theoretical lens to frame companion animal-inclusive Subversive Social Work practices, I utilise a Transformative Mixed Method design (Creswell, 2015), consisting of a survey of Victorian social workers employed within homelessness and family violence frontline services, and semi-structured in-depth qualitative interviews with 20 survey participants.
Main results: Preliminary findings and implications for the discipline of social work, and the family violence and homelessness fields will be presented, in the form of quantitative and qualitative survey data, and qualitative data arising from interviews.