How has COVID-19 affected Goodheart Animal Sanctuaries?

The pandemic has also had a massive impact on our ability to welcome school children and local community groups to our sanctuary. This has created challenges for our Outreach and Education Department. Including: 

• Lockdown measures have meant that any school trips or workshops have had to be cancelled. After the first lockdown, we were able to welcome visitors back again, but in order to protect the health and safety of our core animal care team, we put restrictive guidelines in place so that only small groups of 6 from the same bubble could attend. Prior to COVID-19, we could welcome classes of up to 30 students, which means that we are only able to offer our educational workshops to a fifth of the total that we would usually anticipate. 
   
• Although, like the rest of the country, we felt that another lockdown may be on the horizon, we were still just as saddened following the most recent government announcement on the 31st of October.  As a result of this, we have had to cancel our newly launched Group Visits, which were set up to allow small groups of visitors back to the sanctuary this winter. This is especially sad given the hard work that went into making these possible, as well as for the animals themselves, who have loved greeting visitors again over the last few weeks. 
   

• With teachers under intense pressure to get their students up to speed with everything that they may have missed during lockdown, many schools do not have the time or capacity to organise field trips. Sadly, this means that even when lockdown was lifted, we have seen a drop in the number of schools visiting our site over the past six months.   
   
• Our week of animal assisted therapy which was kindly supported by The National Lottery Celebrate 25 fund has had to be postponed until it is safe to carry out. This means that local disabled children are sadly missing out on the opportunity to connect with our rescued residents.