Healing Strides of Virginia

Therapeutic riding horsemanship program: 2022 has seen a rise in people who are asking for services as compared to our previous covid years. This is good news for our industry, with the challenge over the industry being finding qualified help to provide these much needed services. We still have not reached the pre-covid numbers in this program but we do see a growth pattern. Research in our industry is growing and the findings are all proving what we know to be true, that equine assisted services make a major difference for people's lives in positive ways. Allowing our participants to flourish in areas they struggled in prior to services. It is shown that participating in equine assisted activities decreases trauma triggers, anxiety, depression, hyperactivity at the same time increases concentration, focus and confidence. We know that the strength of the trunk, core, legs and shoulder muscles along with a positive change in cognitive processing, behavior and attention span increases with these interactions. In 2022 we served for 39 weeks of the year and served over 120 individuals.

Mental health educational and coaching program: we are serving people with personal challenges, professional development and/or a mental health diagnosis. Participants range from children with trauma to adults who need help with parenting skills or a family that needs to learn proper boundaries and life skills. The focus is to create a safe and supportive environment for therapy, education and coaching to flourish. Our team is made up of the equines, a professional equine specialist and a licensed or certified mental health provider or coach. Mental wellness is still one of our communities largest concerns overall, with the second cause of death in our state of Virginia for agaes 7 to 17 being suicide. This is prompting alot of concern, obviously. Our response has been to offer a program that is specific to this age group where the goal is to offer equine assisted coaching by a certified recreational therapist, in a way that we can specifically watch for children that may need more support and to be referred to our mental health therapy program. We have had success in recognizing these children and have been able to get them the help they need. This new program is in addition to our other programs that continue to serve those in need of mental health, education and coaching. We work with 13 of our surrounding cities and counties under the child services act and family assessment planning teams. These organizations help identify and then refer families and individuals to us for much needed services. We have also seen a need for continuing to add professional services for businesses that have discovered the "quiet quitting" age and how engagement from the workforce has gone down. We are continuing so see success in identifying these problems and then teaching organizations how to combat this by demonstrating the parallel of leading people with leading horses and building trust with people by building trust with horses.

2022 was a year of getting back to normal. Populations of people that we serve has moved more to people who need mental wellness support along with the participants with physical and cognitive challenges. We have been able to begin new programs that help us to meet the challenges in the communities that we serve. Hippotherapy program: we continue to serve alongside of the local hospital system and work to reach therapy goals of physical therapy, speech pathology and occupational therapy. Working in teams of equines, volunteers, therapist and a certified instructor, we are able to change the lives of these young participants.