Home > Our Services > Animal Assisted Therapy

Background

Menzies Inc offers an Animal Assisted Therapy programs for children and young people at Sages Cottage Farm in Baxter.

Animal Assisted Therapy involves the thoughtful use of animals in the therapeutic setting by a trained clinician who has developed a set of goals for each client, a plan for how to achieve these goals, and a plan for how the animal or animals will be used to assist the child and the clinician to achieve the goals of therapy.

The use of animals in the therapeutic setting is an effective tool to engage children and young people. The programs have been developed with a combination of animal interventions and traditional therapy techniques to address personal issues and develop pro-social behaviours.

The programs are built around three key pro-social competencies: trust, empathy and mastery. These are the three elements intrinsic to healing for damaged and at-risk children.

Anger management is another core pro-social skill that many of our core client group have not yet mastered. Anti-social children often struggle to read body language, have little self-knowledge, and struggle to form meaningful relationships, with both adults and peers. All of these skills are targeted throughout the Animal Assisted Therapy programs offered at Sages Cottage Farm.

Our program aims to help children and young people deal with low self esteem, behaviour problems, life changes, abuse, grief, anger, and feelings of disconnection from the community.

Children and young people are able to work with clinicians in small groups, if suitable, or else on an individual basis.

The Intervention

Although individual goals are developed with each participant, the groups will work through three stages of therapy: the empathy stage, the competence stage and the mastery stage to achieve common goals.

The steps of the empathy stage are:

. Assessment and orientation
. Observation around the animals
. Group dynamic processes

Participants then move into the competence stage which involves:

. Learning comforting touch for the animals
. Animal care activities
. Extension activities

The third stage of therapy is the mastery stage, which involves:

. Sharing and teaching knowledge
. Joining other programs
. Giving back to the community

After each stage of therapy we expect to see growth which can involve learning a new skill or learning something about themselves, other people, or the animals.

Program philosophy

All activities at Sages Cottage Farm incorporate Menzies Inc core values of safety and respect. At the heart of all interventions, we enforce these values and model to the children that Sages Cottage Farm is a safe place to be for children, young people, families, animals, staff and volunteers. All Animal Assisted Therapy interventions run at the property begin with an induction that stresses these values and explains what we mean by safety and respect:

. Safety of the people and the animals makes safe places to start therapeutic work
. Respect for the environment, animals, ourselves and each other sets the tone for growth.

Evaluation

Menzies Inc. is committed to best practice and evaluation of services to enhance and improve our programs. We work very closely with Monash University to negotiate evaluation of selected programs. Details will be discussed at the point of referral.

Intake

Animal Assisted Therapy clients are children and young people who have experienced domestic violence or other emotional trauma. Referrals are welcome through government agencies, community agencies, schools and from private individuals.

The groups run in twenty-week cycles, with rolling admissions allowing participants to enter the groups when an appropriate group space opens up.

A formal referral process , which incorporates setting individual goals as well as the overall group goals of empathy, competence and mastery, takes place before the child or young person can join a group.

Contact details

To make a referral or find out more information about the Animal Assisted Therapy program, please ring Sages Cottage Farm on (03) 5971 5964, or email sages@menzies.org.au

Animal Assisted Therapy Report (500kb)

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