Community & Partnerships

Charity Of The Year

Our Charity of the Year is selected via a colleague nomination and voting process. Our current Charity of the Year partnership with Guide Dogs for the Blind was announced in July 2023 and collections will continue until the end of June 2024.

Colleagues are taking part in a variety of individual and group fundraising activities including charity bake sales, walks and challenges, in addition to donations via traditional cash collection boxes.

In October 2023, we also started to roll out Pennies’ ‘digital charity box’ at client payment points within 440 of our first opinion practices and referral hospitals throughout the UK. The Pennies option lets clients voluntarily add a small donation to their purchases, when paying by card or mobile wallet. The option to round-up their payment to the nearest pound appears automatically during the payment process.

The donations to Guide Dogs will help with: breeding and training guide dogs, supporting them from birth to retirement; supporting adults, young people and children with a vision impairment and their families; and, ongoing research and development.

SignVideo

In 2020, CVS become the first veterinary group to offer SignVideo, a service to deaf pet owners who use British Sign Language (BSL) to make telephone calls to CVS veterinary practices and attend in practice consultations using fully qualified BSL interpreters via video calls. 

The SignVideo service is available in CVS UK small animal, equine, farm and referral practices between the hours of 8am-6pm Monday-Friday (excluding bank holidays).  

Deaf BSL clients can find a practice near them on the Healthy Pet Club and Horse Health Programme websites clicking on the SignVideo link to access the service at the desired practice.

Find your practice on The Healthy Pet Club

Find your practice on Horse Health Programme

Deaf BSL clients can also look for our logos on the SignVideo App to locate a convenient small animal or equine practice. Find out more and download the App on the SignVideo website.