Introduction

Pets are used as sentinels of infectious diseases and environmental contaminants, because they share a common environment and health risks with their owners. However, in the social services programs of Brazil, it is uncommon that pets be included as victims of the vulnerability situation of their owners.

Objective

Analyze the positive and negative aspects encountered in the creation of a public intersectoral flow, between the entities of social, health and animal protection services.

Methods

Four social service entities of three Paraná's cities were contacted, only one had interest in knowing the project. Meetings between researchers, agents of the Department of Social, Health and animal protection services, were done in order to expose the importance of the study and to establish between departments the routing flow of the vulnerable families and animal abuse case.

Results

Just the social and protection animal services of Pinhais city, Paraná, Brazil, accepted knowing the project and planning its implantation. The positive aspects were the empowerment of the social and protection animal staffs about the theme; the established partnership to implant a flow to work with vulnerable families and their pets. The difficulties were: the animal's assessment was not included in the approach of the social services; lack of knowledge about the importance of pets on social problems.

Conclusion

When a family is in vulnerable condition, all their members are too, including the pets. Lack of knowledge of the social service about the subject is the main obstacle for including the pets as indicator of vulnerability.