Fostering goodwill: Here’s how this program helps those with mental health challenges

Many who need in-patient mental health or substance abuse treatment decline help for a simple reason. There’s no one to care for their pets when they’re away.

A new program from Johnson County Mental Health aims to change that and get more people the treatment they need.

“For us, it’s really trying to figure out how we can minimize obstacles to individuals to access treatment,” said Michelle Burchyett, a clinical liaison with RSI and Johnson County Mental Health. “We found that if somebody has a pet that’s in need of care, it’s kind of like a parent with a child. You’re going to choose to take care of those around you before you take care of yourself.”

With help from Friends of Johnson County Mental Health Center, the county is partnering with BestyBnB, a local pet care and fostering business. The company connects those willing to foster pets with those who need the help.

Although a survey found that about 41 of 59 center staff members who responded had at least one person decline treatment in the last six months because of pet care issues, “the reality is when we look at that, we believe numbers are way higher,” Burchyett said, because many people did not fill out the survey.

The first year of the program will allow those at the Center to collect more data on how many people need and use the service.

“It felt like making a dream a reality,” Burchyett said. “It is something I’ve dreamed about having as an option for clients for over a decade. It’s the fact that it’s affordable emergency pet foster care. We compare it to Vrbo (vacation rental). You have that control factor. Clients get to go in and help choose a foster match.”

Clients can specify particular needs, such as if pets need to go to a home without other pets or children.

Though normally there’s a daily fee for the service, the partnership will allow clients of the mental health center to have costs covered with no restrictions as to length or number of stays they need.

Every pet caregiver goes through an orientation, and the company does a background check, too. Those signing up to be caregivers can choose to charge for their services or volunteer them for free, specifically for the center’s clients.

Currently, 20 people have signed up to be caregivers exclusively for these local subsidized programs and 70 others are in the process of signing up and being vetted.

One key point is that the identities of the pet owners stay confidential. The mental health center serves as a middleman to allow transfer of the pet anonymously. Although the center will know identities of both parties, neither the pet owner nor the caregiver will know each other’s names.

The BestyBnB website has a function that will allow anonymous communication between them to share photos and status updates of the pets.

Previously, the company has worked with local domestic violence shelters to arrange accommodations for pets, since shelters typically do not allow them on site.

“We specifically built a program to accommodate any length of stay. In the mental health space, oftentimes, something is one or two days up to maybe a 28- or 30-day period, but oftentimes it’s longer,” said Andy Bond, who co-founded BestyBnB with Matt Krentz. “The length of stay at a domestic violence agency is never really set, so we built a proprietary solution in our platform to enable those stays to be as long as are needed.”

For a longer stay, that might mean a pet goes to a second caregiver at some point if the first is unable to keep them for the entire time period. There have been some logistical hiccups, like arranging transportation to get pets to the center’s offices and figuring out how to house the pets there until the caregiver picks them up.

BestyBnB’s site has been open for about a year, and they’re already in talks to expand the subsidized caregiving program portion of it to other cities. Currently, it operates in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, but they hope to expand to agencies in seven other states.

“As we’ve started talking with other mental health agencies and providers, it’s really created a blueprint to make things much easier for those agencies in implementing their pet program, because Johnson County’s the first agency in the country to have a pet program (work with) a mental health provider,” Bond said.

He said they are helping agencies raise funds to support the programs and hopes to add corporate sponsorships to help with that.

To sign up as a pet caregiver, go to mybestybnb.com. If you’re interested in helping to cover the program’s costs, go to friendsofjcmhc.org/support and indicate your donation is for Foster Pet Care for Clients in Crisis.