Update on European Standard for Assistance Dogs

Marijan Sesar, chair of European Standard CEN/TC 452 “Assistance Dogs”, explained that the committee had been established in September 2016 and hoped to complete its work in 2025. Croatia had held the Secretariat but it was being transferred to Italy with support from the UK and the Czech Republic. Of the 34 member countries of CEN, 21 had actively participated in CEN/TC 452.

Partner organisations included

• ANEC, represented on TC 452 by EGDF
• the liaison partner, IGDF.

CEN/TC 452 had links with two other standards committees:

• CEN/CENELEC JTC 11 “Accessibility in the built environment” and
• CEN/TC10 “Lifts, escalators and moving walks”

The Committee’s objective was to have one standard across Europe to provide the basis for European laws and legislation concerning assistance dogs, to clearly identify “recognised assistance dogs” and to regulate the market in terms of qualifications, organisation and working conditions.

There were seven working groups:
1. Terminology
2. Lifetime welfare
3. Competencies for assistance dog professionals
4. Pre-training, training and tasks
5. Client services
6. Accessibility and universal access
7. Conformity assessment

At previous conferences in Malta and Tallin, convenors of the various working groups had led discussions on the ongoing work of their committees to keep EGDF members informed and involved: Peter van der Heijden, Karl Weissenbacher, Chris Muldoon, Peter Gorbing and Judith Jones.

Zoom meetings that started during Covid had helped the frequency of meetings and the productivity as people were forced into different ways of working.

In 2023 working groups 1 and 6 would go to enquiry, groups 2, 4 and 5 would circulate drafts in preparation for the enquiry and groups 3 and 7 would continue to work on their drafts. He hoped the standards could be published by 2025, but that was a challenging goal.

Hilary Armour, convenor of CEN/TC 452 WG 5 “Client Services” commenced by remarking on the enormous work Marijan Sesar had done over the past six years. She said the process of consensus took a long time because every country had different laws and views. She added that a standard was not a user manual or an instruction; it merely said that one’s systems and procedures had to follow the European standard.

Inadequately trained assistance dogs could cause problems for well-trained ones. Her working group were not writing laws, nor giving their opinion about self-trained dogs, but saying that any assistance dog must meet these standards. The working group was looking at delivering a good service to clients and communicating well with them. Their standard had to apply to Guide Dogs UK with 4,000 working dogs as well as much smaller organisations. It also had to apply to self-trained dogs even though some of their handlers had supervision from an organisation and some did not. The working group separated requirements and responsibilities for guide dog handlers from those for service providers.

The 30 members of working group 5 had reached the point where they thought they had done as much as they could and were almost ready for the enquiry phase.

Andrew Lamb asked if her working group covered medical assessment of clients as suitable for a guide dog. Hillary replied that it only says that the assessment must exist.

Ana Bacelo asked how individuals could join the committee and Hillary replied that she could apply to her national committee to join them or the European committee.

Judith Jones commented that prior to the establishment of CEN/TC 452 Darinka Lecnik-Urbancil participated in a workshop agreement under auspices of EGDF to explore the possibility of a European standard. In 2016 the agreements could have expired without a trace, but Darinka worked to turn them into a technical committee which Croatia then agreed to lead. Judith said that Darinka was the “birth mother” of CEN/TC 452 and without her persistence there would not have been an assistance dog standard.