Mossburn Community Farm – Equine Assisted Learning
Mossburn Community Farm is an animal rescue centre which also provides therapeutic, educational and personal development placements and courses for vulnerable young people.
The Holywood Trust provided a grant to support the delivery of the Equine Assisted Learning / Psychotherapy programmes - ‘Hoofway’ for vulnerable young people at Mossburn.
The objectives of this grant are:
- To enhance the lives of people and animals.
- Improve the employability of young people
- Improve the literacy and numeracy of young people
- Improve understanding of themselves and others
- Improve self-confidence and communication skills
- Improve their ability to deal with new situations
- Learn and continuously improve the delivery of Equine Assisted Learning/Equine Assisted Psychotherapy
After a successful pilot project, Hoofway is now delivered to groups and individual young people. The individuals use the horse as a means through which to interpret their own experiences/feelings. No direct questions are ever asked of the individual and, because they have only been asked what the horse is feeling, through the medium of the horse, they are quite open about their own thoughts and emotions.
Therapy is delivered using a horse specialist, a mental health professional and the horse. The horse specialist picks up on how the horse is reacting to the individual. The horse will often reflect the feelings of the individual, e.g. stress or aggression. A mental health professional and a horse specialist will continually adapt the session to ensure the individual’s particular needs and requirements are met. The young people can also work in groups and often they find that this helps improve their team skills.
The young people are referred to Hoofway by Social Services, Youth Justice, CAMHS, Crannog, Schools and other organisations dealing with vulnerable young people.
Two quotes from young people who were on the sessions follow:-
“This was a strange magical experience…. It made me think!”
“I discovered a new way of dealing with situations, and noticed problems are not as big as I thought. Blackie just showed me that!”
