The Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust is looking to expand a charity partnership which sees volunteers with dogs visit hospital patients and vulnerable older people in their own homes to fight loneliness.
The Doggies on Prescription scheme, which the trust runs with the Wag & Company organisation, launched in 2018. It expanded from providing visits with older people in the community to visits to wards at Hexham General Hospital.
Now, visits take place across the trust's hospitals in Northumberland and North Tyneside and in the community. Nigel Gray and his American cockapoo Whitley have become firm friends, and "almost adopted" by the hospital trust.
