We are so happy to share something that we have been working on since the start of aaisg – our guidelines on AAI practice in Singapore. While there are existing guidelines from various organisations on the conduct of AAI, we have customised this document to be as relevant as possible to an individual practising AAI in Singapore, taking into account our local context, legislation, and cultural and religious sensitivities.
This document has been drafted to include guiding principles, accompanied by practical ways of putting these principles in action.
For consistency on the use of terms in the AAI field, we have adopted the definitions used in the IAHAIO white paper (Definitions for Animal Assisted Intervention and Guidelines).
We would like to express our great appreciation to the following individuals for their contributions to these guidelines:
1. Dr Nancy Gee (Professor of Psychiatry, Bill Balaban Chair in Human-Animal Interaction, and Director of the Center for Human-Animal Interaction at Virginia Commonwealth University)
2. Ms Maureen Huang (Founder and Clinical Director, Pawsibility)
3. Ms Fion Yip (Principal Social Worker and Certified Play and Animal-Assisted Therapist, Children’s Cancer Foundation)
4. Ms Kristina Dieta Setiabudi (Lead Dog Trainer and Senior Behaviour Consultant, PuppyColours)
We hope that you find this set of guidelines useful in your journey in AAI.
Please note that this set of guidelines is a living document and will be updated when new scientific evidence or standards of best practices in AAI are made available. We are happy to have contributions to this document from other researchers and practitioners as well, please feel free to reach out to us if this is something you are interested in!
Standards and guidelines are important as they: