What is a home assistance canine?

Our canine home assistance scheme places our highly trained dogs with adults with physical disabilities and conditions, to provide vital practical support in the home.

Our  home assistance canines are tailor-trained to their partner’s needs and can carry out important practical tasks inside the home that our partners may find painful, tiring or physically cannot do themselves. This could include retrieving dropped items, calling help in an emergency, helping with undressing, and many more.

Dogs in our canine home assistance programme are specifically trained to provide practical support in the home only, so they do not have public access rights in shops or public environments. However, home assistance canines are trained to accompany their partners on walks in the local outdoor areas for exercise.

In return, our partners and their support network must be able to provide for all of the dog’s needs, including exercise and health needs. Canine home assistance partners are required to undertake a Partnership Training Course and our Aftercare Team will support the partnership for the full working life of the dog.

Interesting in finding out more?

To find out if you would be eligible to apply when we reopen to home assistance canine applications, please see our home assistance canine applicant information pack by clicking the button below.

How do I apply for a home assistance canine?

Thank you for your interest in applying for a home assistance canine.

To manage demand for our services and the time that applicants are on our waiting list, we will open our waiting list at specific times and to specified locations.

The information you will need to provide and how to make a first-stage application for a home assistance canine will appear on this page at least four weeks prior to the next opening date. This is to ensure that you have enough time to check your eligibility and prepare for making your first-stage application. We recommend keeping an eye on this website page and our social media for announcements.

Due to such high demand, upon receiving all first-stage applications, a set number of these applications will then be automatically and impartially selected by a computer program, to go through to second-stage assessment. This approach enables all potential applicants a fair opportunity to apply, whilst enabling us to best manage our wait times for those who do go on to join our waiting list within our resources available to support our home assistance canine partnerships in all regions of the UK.