The summer sees a (slightly) slower pace at Future Roots: schools are on holiday and the weather makes a farmer’s life easier.
We took this opportunity to arrange a staff training programme called ‘Animal Assisted Therapy in Counselling’, which was sponsored by the Dorset County Community Fund. The Fund, which is managed by the Dorset Community Foundation on behalf of Dorset County Council, provides grants to build the capacity of local organisations to deliver services.
The training was delivered by Kathryn Kimbley, the director of HumAnima CIC (a social enterprise providing specialist training in this area), who works with her dog, Flossie, as a co-therapist.
We learnt a lot about the theory behind many of the practices that we have been using at Future Roots over the last few years. Building a relationship between an animal and person can be extremely helpful when you are trying to find solutions to someone’s problems. Some organisations use dog training as an opportunity to build a person’s perseverance and give them a sense of achievement. Our staff have tried the same approach by supporting young people to halter training a cow! Although this might sound unusual, the result is often the same.
In this sense, animal assisted activities such as these focus very much on a particular task. This helps someone who may not be ready to talk about their problems get used to a new environment and help them feel safe.
The training really helped to cement the use of animals into our work. From September, we will be adding a greater emphasis of this as we pilot these approaches across Dorset.
