Radical Healing in Precarity: LGBTQ+ Young People’s Approaches to Life Challenges and Aspirations through Pet Caregiving in the Context of Homelessness

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear author

how did you choose participants, and in which criteria?

Please can you explain the ethical approval and informed consent if its in written form?

Is it possible to make a figure or table for the results? It will be easier to understand.

Author Response

Response to Reviewers

Reviewer #1

1. How did you choose participants, and in which criteria?
   6. We elaborate more on our study inclusion criteria on page 6.
2. Please can you explain the ethical approval and informed consent if it’s in written form?
   1. We elaborate more on the ethical approval of the study on page 6: “The university institutional review board assessed and approved the project’s full protocol by ensuring it met the high ethical standards promoted by the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI Program). All study personnel completed CITI training prior to data collection.”
   2. We also explain further that informed consent was in verbal form.
3. Is it possible to make a figure or table for the results? It will be easier to understand.
   1. We now include Table 2 which provides a summary of the qualitative findings.
   2. We also include Figure 1 to visually illustrate the process of radical healing among participants.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a unique question to ask. I'm not sure how large of a population it applies to but the results are interesting. I think what is more powerful in your work are the responses about care and services in general. An emphasis on this with recommendations for consideration by providers (including policies that support youth being able to have companion animals with them) would be more powerful.

Author Response

Reviewer #2

1. This is a unique question to ask. I'm not sure how large of a population it applies to but the results are interesting. I think what is more powerful in your work are the responses about care and services in general. An emphasis on this with recommendations for consideration by providers (including policies that support youth being able to have companion animals with them) would be more powerful.
   1. We have expanded on the recommendations our findings can provide for service providers on page 15: “Primarily, YPEH often struggle to access services that are pet-friendly or they may not be aware of pet-inclusive services. While acknowledging the challenges of building pet-inclusive programming due to cost and safety implications, service providers can still take heed of study findings by brainstorming possibilities and goals toward supporting all youths’ needs, including their pet relationships. For example, organizations can begin to implement pet-inclusion in incremental ways starting with attainable changes like offering kennel services in a secured area for safekeeping of animals while youth are accessing services.”

Author Response File: Author Response.docx