A section with key insights from PetRescue's 2025 guardian-assisted rehoming program report: Finding another way home

Pet rehoming application characteristics by the Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) Index of Relative Socio-economic Advantage and Disadvantage (IRSAD) of the owner’s suburb

• Higher veterinary care in advantaged areas: Vaccination, microchipping, and desexing rates were higher for pets owned by guardians in areas with a higher SEIFA Index. This likely reflects accessibility challenges for guardians on lower incomes in obtaining veterinary care.
   
• Application trends by SES: Guardians from higher-advantage areas were more likely to apply for Home2Home than those from more disadvantaged areas. This may be influenced by the program requirement that pets be fully vet-worked, as pets from areas with lower IRSAD scores were less likely to have this work completed.

Guardians in SEIFA decile 1 (areas of highest disadvantage) were approximately half as likely to be open to receiving additional support to stay with their pets at the time of application.

This could be related to the types of challenges they were facing, their access to additional services that may allow them to keep their pets, or both.

• Intent to rehome pets: Guardians from lower socioeconomic areas were more likely to take on pets with the intention of rehoming them. In this sample, most of these pets were cats, which aligns with previous research indicating that carers of community cats are more likely to come from lower-socioeconomic households (e.g.,Characteristics of cat semi-owners).
   
• Species differences by SES: Interestingly, the proportion of cats and dogs differed according to the socioeconomic status of the guardian’s community. Guardians from lower SES areas were more likely to seek rehoming assistance for dogs, whereas those from higher SES areas were more likely to seek rehoming assistance for cats.

Reasons for seeking rehoming assistance

All reasons reported by guardians for seeking rehoming assistance were compared according to whether their suburb fell into SEIFA IRSAD deciles 1–5 (lower scores) or 6–10 (higher scores) using Pearson Chi-Square analysis (significance value <0.05).

• Human-centric challenges and disadvantage: Guardians living in areas of lower socioeconomic advantage were more likely to report financial hardship, time constraints, rental or landlord issues, and domestic violence as drivers of their need to rehome pets. This highlights the likely influence of human-centric challenges and social determinants of health on pet welfare outcomes (see The Impact of the Social Determinants of Human Health on Companion Animal Welfare and Navigating the relationship of pet guardianship and the social determinants of health in Australia: insights from a cross sectional study).
   
• Higher advantage and lifestyle-related drivers: Guardians from areas with higher SEIFA IRSAD scores were more likely to report a family member allergy or leaving the country as drivers of their decision to seek rehoming assistance.
   
• Other drivers: All other reasons reported by guardians for seeking rehoming assistance did not differ in frequency between the two socioeconomic groups.

Further detail is provided in Appendix Table A1: Pet rehoming application characteristics by the Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) Index of Relative Socio-economic Advantage and Disadvantage (IRSAD) of the owner’s suburban and Appendix Table A2: Guardian-reported reasons for seeking rehoming support by socio-economic advantage (SEIFA IRSAD).

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