Animal Assisted Therapy for Special Needs Children

Twice a year, we run enrichment and further education workshops for our staff and this year we ran a photo-therapy workshop. Two experts in the field came to run a two-hour seminar to teach us techniques that we have since been able to incorporate into our therapy groups.

 Eve, one of our other therapists, reports:

“With three out of my five groups, we incorporated photography projects based on what we had learnt at the seminar. Each participant was asked to take a picture of something meaningful to them or a few pictures that depict who they are. Then they made a collage of them, adding other magazine pictures. We found that children may not like speaking openly about themselves but they like showing ‘what they are made of’. It is a less threatening way for them to let others see them and know more about them.”

A new addition to the program this year is a visit to the new Hilary Tisch Biodiversity Exhibit and Butterfly House. While some of our groups did not like visiting the exhibit, because of the high humidity and the fact that there are butterflies flying around freely, other groups really love seeing them and learning about the other insects there and have visited on a number of occasions. The immersion aspect of the exhibit, the fact the butterflies are loose and the children enter into their world, gives some of the children a feeling of freedom and release.