Animal Assisted Therapy

	Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT) is a type of therapy that involves an animal with specific characteristics, becoming a fundamental part of a person's treatment. AAT is designed to improve the physical, social, emotional, and/or cognitive functioning of the patient, as well as provide educational and motivational effectiveness for the participant. AAT can be provided on an individual or group basis. Many kinds of animals are used in therapy, including dogs, cats, elephants, birds, dolphins, rabbits, lizards, and other small animals. AAT with horses is known specifically as equine-assisted psychotherapy (EAP), equine-assisted learning (EAL), equine-assisted creative living (EACL), equine-assisted personal development (EAPD) or therapeutic horseback riding.
The sanctuary has run the AAT programme for people with severe mental health difficulties, for approximately eight years. This started out as a pilot scheme but soon came to be regarded as useful by social workers, psychiatrists and employment officers. We then entered into a service level agreement with Aberdeenshire Council for people with severe and enduring mental health difficulties. anctuary has run the AAT programme for people with severe mental health difficulties, for approximately eight years. This started out as a pilot scheme but soon came to be regarded as useful by social workers, psychiatrists and employment officers. We then entered into a service level agreement with Aberdeenshire Council for people with severe and enduring mental health difficulties. Since starting the programme we have identified other client groups who would benefit from using our service. We have run several pilot schemes for client groups with learning and physical difficulties, people who suffer from substance misuse, homeless people as well as young people from organisations such as Lead Scotland. These pilot schemes have established the need for the expansion of the Willows programme.
Willows is situated in a rural and relatively deprived area. We are fairly central to Peterhead, Fraserburgh and Banff. This region has a high amount of people suffering from substance misuse, mental health issues and unemployment. Willows acts as a life line for a lot of vulnerable people, and in many cases it is the only programme particular clients are willing to try. We work very closely with Employment officers, New Deal; Support training, Social workers etc. This helps us to maintain the high standard of service that we provide.

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