Who Cares Wins… Wag & Company receives the Queen’s Award for voluntary service

02.06.2020

Our heartfelt congratulations to valued client and long-time friends of Guerilla, Wag & Company on being honoured with the prestigious Queen’s Award in recognition for their outstanding work in our local communities!

Launched in 2016 with the aim of addressing widespread isolation and lonelines in our elderly population, Wag & Company assess and recruit volunteers and their dogs as Visiting Wag Teams, who regularly visit older people in care homes, hospitals, hospices and even their own homes (the only visiting dog charity to do so).

Isolation and loneliness in our growing elderly population is significant with more than 51,000 pensioners in the North East alone describing themselves as lonely all or most of the time.  Many of them are dog lovers who can no longer own a dog because of deteriorating health or changed domestic circumstances, but who, nevertheless, miss the love and companionship a dog provides.

Today there are over 400 professionally assessed Visiting Wag Teams active in the region, they’ve made over 74,000 visits and nearly 3,000 elderly people are benefitting from their friendship on referral from social care agencies like the NHS, GP practices, The British Red Cross, Age UK and Adult Social Services.  Northumberland NHS Foundation Trust refer to Wag as their “Doggies on Prescription” Service *.

Known as the MBE for volunteer groups, the Queen’s Award was created in 2002 to celebrate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee and is the highest award a volunteer group can recieve in the UK. Representatives of Wag & Company will receive the award from Her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland, Lord Lieutenant of Northumberland later this year.  In addition, representatives from Wag & Company will attend a Garden Party at Buckingham Palace in May 2021 along with other recipients of this year’s Award.

“We are absolutely delighted that the special contribution of our over 400 amazing volunteers has been honoured in this way. Every day they are all working hard to make the lives of elderly dog lovers brighter across our communities and even in these challenging times, their commitment to developing creative ways to keep in touch and to lifting spirits is really inspirational.”

We’re proud to be a member of the Wag family, to find out more about the amazing work Wag & Company are doing, and to get involved, visit wagandcompany.co.uk

* The operation is of course temporarily suspended due to the Covid-19 restrictions.

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