When weighing up behaviour interventions, “farm therapy” might not be on your list of options for supporting struggling pupils. But according to Tish Feilden, co-founder and lead therapist at Jamie’s Farm, a charity that specialises in residential farm therapy for schoolchildren in the UK, it should be.
The idea is that taking part in the manual labour of farming - from mucking out and feeding animals to tending crops - brings social benefits as well as mental and physical health gains and that this, in turn, can have a positive knock-on effect for behaviour.
According to Social Farms and Gardens, a charity that supports communities to farm, garden and grow together, there are already around 120 school farms in the UK giving children these opportunities. And while visiting a farm might sound like little more than a fun day out, the benefits of getting involved in farm work should not be underestimated.
In 2005, academics Joe Sempik and Jo Aldridge studied a wide range of garden projects in the UK and concluded that social and therapeutic horticulture (STH) projects promote social inclusion through the dimensions proposed by Burchardt et al (2002) of “production, consumption, social interaction and political engagement”’. They suggested STH had many of the attributes of work: meaningful occupation, development of skills, physical activity, routine, structure and social opportunities.
These findings were echoed a few years later, in 2008, when Social Farms and Garden conducted a survey with care farms (farms that provide or promote healing, mental health, social or educational care services) in the UK. In their research, the majority of all care farmers described physical benefits to clients, including improvements to their physical health and the development of skills including dexterity, motor function and time management.
However, in 2019, researchers from the University of Sheffield found that while people value care farming, and there is some evidence that taking part might improve depression and anxiety, there is a lack of quantitative evidence that care farms improve individual’s quality of life.
“Larger studies involving single service user groups and fully validated outcome measures are needed to prove more conclusive evidence about the benefits of care farming,” the researchers explained.
Yet they also pointed out that there is a clear demand for this type of intervention for disengaged young people: “The evidence for care farming for other service user groups is not as well developed as it is for those with mental health problems, but that is not to say there is not a need. Disaffected youth, adult offenders and people with dementia represent significantly large vulnerable population groups where current service provision struggles to meet demand.
Farm therapy: how does it work in practice?
So, while farm therapy is not likely to be a silver bullet for every young person who is struggling at school, there are those who it could help. But how exactly does farm therapy work?
At Jamie’s Farm, pupils come to stay for a week-long programme. Feilden explains that, at the beginning of the stay, children are welcomed with open arms: a real fuss is made about how happy the staff are to see them, and there is a focus on positivity.
The first stop is the “Welcome Barn”, where children are encouraged to introduce each other, including something they like about that person.
Next comes a tour of the farm. At first, many pupils are hesitant to get dirty, and are put off by the unfamiliar smells, says Feilden, but that’s normal at this stage.
The children are then divided into small groups of two or three. They will remain in these groups throughout the week as they rotate through a number of activities, getting really stuck into farm life.
To give an idea of what that life looks like: when they wake up in the morning, all but one of the groups is sent out to feed the animals before having breakfast themselves; the other group stays behind to cook breakfast. After everyone - animals and humans - have eaten, the pupils take part in a “check-in”. This involves children and adults sitting in a circle, and discussing how they are feeling. It’s also an opportunity to “shoutout” any achievements from the day before.
The rest of the day is spent doing three types of activities: farm work, including mucking out and building new fences; gardening, in which children plant and harvest fruit and vegetables; and cooking, where children make the meal for the entire group.
These daily activities are interspersed with walks in the countryside, equine therapy, one-to-one “walk and talk” sessions with a therapy coordinator and group work to address sensitive issues that might be happening at school or at home.
All of these activities work together to foster lifelong skills and resilience in the children, explains Feilden. Farming, in particular, builds children’s sense of responsibility and empathy - caring for vulnerable animals helps them to see their usefulness in the community.
“There’s always apprehension at first, especially throughout the pandemic. But by the end, there is a massive transformation,” she says. “You see the spirit of the child emerge again, their personality emerge, their sense of joy and fun and adventure, and all of those things that motivate children to have an appetite for life, rather than feeling like a victim.”
The change is so pronounced for some pupils that teachers “don’t recognise the children from who they see at school,” she continues. Suddenly, a young person who has always struggled in class might be “holding their head up, speaking up in meetings, volunteering to do things, showing initiative, showing care and concern for [others]”, Feilden explains.
This anecdotal evidence is supported by data. In the 2017-18 academic year 1,148 young people took part in the programme. Of those, 89 per cent had a higher mental wellbeing score after visiting, 66 per cent displayed improved engagement with school six months after visiting, and 58 per cent of those at risk of permanent exclusion before their visit were no longer at risk six months later.
How to replicate farm therapy in your school
In fact, the results are so positive that many teachers leave the farm keen to replicate the benefits within their own schools, says Feilden.
She gives the example of her son Jamie, a teacher, who took lambs into his school many years ago in a bid to curb problems with playground violence. From the day the lambs arrived, aggression and violence diminished. Children with low attendance began to attend because they wanted to feed the lambs, and began to show real tenderness and care towards them.
This anecdote provides a model for how small-scale farm therapy approaches can be introduced in any school. The key, Feilden says, is to start small, and with animals you can safely leave over the weekend with water and food: chickens, for example.
“If you’ve got a good caretaker who will look after the animals during the holidays, then sheep are also quite good because they’re pretty resilient, and can be tame. Goats are great for children because they have a great character,” she says. “As long as schools have a relationship with the local farm, so they can help with trimming feet and shearing them, it can be straightforward.”
A relationship with local farmers matters, then. Schools will also need extensive licenses to house livestock, and again, farmers can help leaders with the paperwork, she says. Schools should therefore take the time to reach out to the local farms at the very start of the process - their knowledge, says Feilden, is immensely valuable.
If schools find the idea of keeping livestock on the site too daunting or simply don’t have the room to do so, she recommends going on visits to local farms or horse sanctuaries instead. Even in really urban areas, there may be city farms close by.
Ultimately, there will be options open to schools in any context. And while more research might be needed, the potential benefits are huge.
So, what do you think? Isn’t it time to muck in?
