Equine Assisted Counseling
HOPE HILL'S EQUINE ASSISTED COUNSELING PROGRAM
The Equine Program is a supplemental program to the Residential Treatment, Transitional Living and Therapeutic Foster Care Programs. Youth from all three of these programs are eligible to participate in this unique form of therapy.
Equine Assisted Counseling teaches abused and neglected young women to empathize and be compassionate while learning to care and touch appropriately. For some of the youth involved the program provides the youth with their first successful relationship.
Participating youth experience increasing self worth, competency and confidence by learning to give the 1000 pound animals commands that get immediate responses.
Through equine therapy the girls will be taught structure and consistency through a regular schedule of brushing, bathing and grooming the animals. The program will also enable the girls to form positive attachments, thereby beginning to heal their history of negative relationships.
Most importantly the equine program will equip the girls to take the skills they have learned and use them in forming new and improved relationships with peers, teachers and family members.
