(2) Closing the gap between research and practice in childhood cruelty prevention

Key activities

• Collaborated closely with the Scottish SPCA to track the impact of our research on the animal welfare educational intervention they deploy to 270,000 Scottish children through their ‘Prevention through Education’ programme. We also tracked the impact of our research on their new organisational priorities and educational target groups

• Carried out a long-term follow-up online survey to measure the impact of our knowledge exchange events  on practitioners and developed two new reflective workshops

• Designed and administered an online survey for the first round of a Delphi study of animal welfare education experts. This study aims to achieve consensus on the best ways to teach children about animal welfare and prevent cruelty

• Tracked public engagement and media coverage to assess how our research is being received, and traffic to three associated websites:

      - Caar

      - #SayNoToPuppyDealers campaign

      - New UK cross-charity collaborative site on animal welfare and cruelty prevention intervention programmes for children

• Measured and evidenced the impact of our research in terms of UK and Scottish government discussion, support, and innovation in relation to policy and legal changes on the illegal puppy trade

Key events - click on each one to view associated materials

• Workshop 5 - Children's relationships with different types of companion animal (April 2019)

• Workshop 6 - New advances in animal cruelty prevention (May 2019)

• National knowledge exchange conference, co-hosted with the Scottish SPCA, ‘The Links Between Animal Cruelty, Adverse Childhood Experiences and Human Violence: Research and Practice’ (September 2019)