EQUINE THERAPY
BACK IN THE SADDLE
W hen 12-year-old Lyra came to Turning Point’ s Somerset Drug and Alcohol Service( SDAS), she was dealing with trauma that came from being a part of a family with a history of multi-generational substance use.
Lyra’ s early childhood experiences led to her to taking overdoses of medication and self-harming through cutting. Despite her struggles, Lyra would dismiss therapy, saying‘ what’ s the point?’ However, when she revealed that she had an interest in animals, the young person’ s team felt equine-assisted therapy would be a way to give her the support she needed.
The Pegasus Project takes an holistic approach, incorporating horses into therapeutic processes to address mental,
When used appropriately equine-assisted therapy has the potential to get the lives of young people with severe trauma back on track, says Dawn Holmes
emotional, and physical health and wellbeing. It focuses on activities like brushing, feeding, and leading horses – rather than riding – under the guidance of mental health professionals and youth workers. Although these might seem like everyday activities with a horse, with the facilitation of the skilled trauma therapist they can become highly effective ways of undertaking, processing and transforming adverse experiences.
The idea came from a conversation between myself – in my position as the operations manager at SDAS and the national young person’ s lead at Turning Point – and Philip King, who is an equine facilitated psychotherapist. We really wanted something different for the young people that we support in Somerset, something that they could do alongside the more traditional forms of therapy. From this partnership between SDAS and Philip’ s CIC, Equi-Librium Coaching and Therapy, the Pegasus Project was born.
BUDGETARY CHALLENGES I’ ve long wanted a project like this, and having found the right therapist to partner with we then had to tackle the challenge of not having the budget for equine-assisted therapy – as it’ s not funded by the NHS or other statutory agencies. The significant levels of trauma among the young people we support also meant we needed exactly the right equine therapist – if we’ re going to open a Pandora’ s box we need someone qualified and experienced who can deal with the issues that come up.
Philip’ s was also looking for the right organisation to partner with.‘ Having worked for 36 years in mental health services, I know that working with people when they’ re young, when these traumatic experiences are a bit fresher, you can make a massive difference to their whole life trajectory,’ he says.
Until last year, Philip was chief nurse and chief operating officer at an NHS Trust, and often saw people waiting for six months to get mental health support.‘ Six months is a massive amount of time in a young person’ s life,’ he states.‘ In that time, you can really help them start to change the way they see themselves so they’ re not thinking that they’ re a failure or a victim of life – they can start to see that there’ s real potential for them to achieve things.’
When it came to funding the project, we were able to get a grant from Avon and Somerset police and crime commissioner that would see it run for a year. One of the things that we felt was important was that we weren’ t just dropping off young people to do a session with Philip – we wanted to embed it into our care plans.
If a young person wanted to get involved, their substance
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