Healing Strides of Virginia

Therapeutic riding horsemanship program: 2023 has continued to see a need to fill in our community. We are finding that the power of the horse is only increasing when it comes to helping young and old alike grow in resilency, trust and physical strenth. The horse as a motivator is why the populations we serve find us and build relationships here. We strive to have people gain and learn so much from this relationship. Finding qualified help is still a struggle but our services are being well received and lives are changed in so many positive ways including increasing concentration, focus, confidence and resilency. Our reach has grown to servicing close to 200 people a week in our programming.

Mental health educational and coaching program: we are serving almost 100 people a week in this program mostly made up from substance abuse populations. Foster children is our next largest group. We are working hard to help people with resilency and self regulation. Veterans are another population that we are supporting in mental wellness. We have started a substance abuse program that has grown to serving over 9000 horse human interactions in a year, having over 16,000 hours of volunteer service and servicing over 65 different populations of people groups. We began a new program called "finding your stride" which was developed to spot early the children that have been missed in the system for mental wellness. With the suicide being the second cause of death for our children aged 7-17, this program was designed to identify these children prior to being lost. Our staff continues to grow in their own education and are the top in the industry. We are the second mental health facility in the state to receive a license for brief strategic family therapy, having the first fully licensed therapist in the state.

2023 was a year of continuing to try and grow and find new ways to serve our community. Populations of people that we assist consist of 65 different areas of need. Service has changed to mental wellness, as well as continuing to serve the participants with physical and cognitive challenges. New programs have continued to grow out of this recognized need. They help us to meet the challenges in the communities that we serve. Hippotherapy program: working in conjunction with our local hospital system we serve our more critical children with physical, speech and occupational therapy. Working with a team of equines, certified professionals and voulnteers we continue to see children say first words and take first steps.