Centred Horseplay - When Talking Isn't Working

Most of our young people are involved with Children's Services due to being excluded or at risk of exclusion from school, involved in or at risk of involvement in crime & anti-social behaviour or other social difficulties. Many of our young people also suffer from additional disadvantage: living in poverty; and/or suffering neglect or abuse (e.g. victims or witnesses of domestic violence), victims of child sexual exploitation, among others. We specifically target those young people who are hardest to reach, i.e. those who are unable or unwilling to participate in conventional 'talk based' therapies and therefore do not engage in other provision that is made available to them. We are often the ‘last resort’ for many of these young people and we have good evidence that our participants are more willing to engage with conventional programmes, many go on to engage in other programmes after participating on our course.

Our flagship ReStart course is a five-day intensive programme of evidence-based, challenging, fun, horsemanship-based learning. During the course participants will learn, practice and repeat tailored strategies to manage themselves through a series of fun, mostly un-mounted, challenges that increase in difficulty throughout the course. Participants have an amazing week-long experience with high level horses, training as “horse whisperers” to learn how to be truly calm, focused and clear in their communication. Our facilitators are expert at coaching these skills and, as excellent horsemen they also read participants’ body language and manage difficult behaviour through non-verbal strategies.

The skills we develop in the course are:

• Engagement(Confidence as a Learner) - enthusiastically taking on new challenges, pushing limits whilst also taking care of own confidence
• Responsibility- taking responsibility for our own thoughts, emotions and actions
• Calmness- having the habit of calmness and knowing how to create it in difficult situations
• Assertiveness- able to be calmly assertive, without getting aggressive or upset
• Realistic Analysis & Planning- Stopping to think before acting, making a realistic assessment of situations and planning accordingly
• Focus & Perseverance- working towards goals despite setbacks
• Relating to Others / Empathy- seeing the needs of others, offering care and support, feeling closely connected
• Communication & Language- two way, respectful, assertive communications, having language to talk about thinking and emotions

The young person will need to model each of the above skills for the horse to positively respond and complete each challenge. Horses are carefully selected and highly trained to ensure clear and easily observed physical feedback -- e.g. if a child is aggressive the horse will simply back away. Facilitators employ an innovative non-verbal approach to re-shaping difficult behaviour and enabling participants to become confident learners. Our methodological focus is on social/emotional learning coached 'in the moment', in response to difficulties encountered. Progress is reflected on and recorded using our much-praised Star tool - thinking about applying the skills learnt to real-life situations. Success is celebrated through award ceremonies and children proudly take home their stars, certificates, photos and a DVD of themselves in action.

The ReStart; an innovative programme which has been studied and evaluated by multiple Universities and sector experts (seewww.thehorsecourse.org/evidence) and is found to improve emotional regulation and thinking skills with multiple cohorts who are not progressing within traditional talk based services. These skills have led to significant ‘real-life’ impacts, eg:

Call to Action 2017, Dr. Hemingway, Professor of Public Health, Bournemouth University (BU)

• 81% of participants show statistically significant improvements in all 8 skills on the THC Skills Star, assessed pre-post by professional referrers – the average shift is 10.4 points on a 32 point scale

TheHorseCourse Evidence Review, working with offenders 2015. Published by New Philanthropy Capital & CLINKS (peer reviewed CSAAP, MOJ)

• 27% point reduction in reoffending for violent young offenders
• Exemplar Theory of Change
• Conservative Estimate in prisons of £8.30 saved for every £1 spent

HETI International Congress 2018– BU presented findings

• 95% engagement rate across multiple cohorts
• 70%+ show improved attendance and engagement with school/training/work, improved relationships, reduced problem behaviours and greater self-belief

Impact

Evidence collected from 2 month post course reviews; conducted by the original referrer, shows an average 26% gain across all 8 points of our much praised THC Skills Star. Our research shows that not only do the 8 core skills we teach through horsemanship stick (see above list) but that they lead to better life choices.

These skills are also shown to lead to the following 4 outcomes:

• 82% Show Greater Engagement:

Our programme has been shown to increase levels of engagement with education and/or training, we use an action learning process and the magic of the horse to get participants to engage. We are then able to teach them to become confident and effective learners in the horsemanship context.

• 95% Show Reduced Problem Behaviours:

Our activities train people how to be calm and focused even in difficult and pressured situations.

• 90% Show Improved Relationships:

Participants learn, first with a horse then one another how to read others and respond appropriately. This empathy in action creates better relationships.

• 82% Show Improved Personal Identity:

Through the ethos learnt and practiced with the horses, our participants learn a greater sense of respect balanced with self-esteem, fairness, politeness and begin to see themselves as good citizens. This has a positive impact on creating stronger communities as the participant re-engages with family, friends and society as a result of improved life skills and decreasing exclusion and isolation.