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Animal Assisted Therapy at Amelia Trust Farm
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For some young people it is their first trusting, caring relationship; how do donkeys, young people, AAT and the Amelia Trust work?
The Trust’s donkeys are ‘working donkeys’ with a difference. We are using donkeys to play a groundbreaking role in the relatively new phenomena of Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT).
Research has shown that donkeys can form lifelong friendships and have the ability to experience emotions. Donkeys are smaller and less intimidating than some farm animals allowing someone with no animal experience to get close to them. They are naturally calm animals, often choosing to stand stoic in a crisis while deciding what to do.
The rationale for their use of donkeys in AAT at the Trust initially was a chance encounter. Two farm donkeys needed extra care in their old age and were taken on by Trust Youth Worker Ann Slater. Through Ann’s work with young people attending the Trust it became apparent that something very special was happening between donkey and young person. Even the most hardened, resistant and angry young person seemed to calm and show affection to them.
After developing work in conjunction with the Devon Donkey Sanctuary a full programme of AAT is now in place. Young people get the opportunity to become the care giver to a selected donkey, and over a series of sessions the donkeys take on many roles in the progress of the young person. Sessions are facilitated by an animal assisted therapist and of course the donkeys.
Young people return to work with the donkeys for the same hours of each week. Some request extended time, carrying out more involved tasks like driving in harness, using carts in harness, entering shows, attending parades and a whole host of other activities, we have even taken the donkeys to visit film sets, schools and hospital wards.
It possible to predict with some accuracy which donkey is going to approach which type of person. For example one donkey particularly homes in on loud or quick moving young people, while another always approaches shorter people first. They really are very individual and unique in character.
