Details
The purpose of this placement time is:
The New Zealand Riding for the Disabled (RDA) started with a single pony club in 1962. Since then they have established over 50 branches throughout New Zealand. RDA provides therapeutic horse riding using a goals and outcomes approach with a research-informed program from UK.
While the organisation uses volunteers who help look after the horses and grounds as well as those that work more closely with riders, there is also a core of trained staff who take the role of lead coach, establishing programs for riders as well as training and supervising volunteers.
The Dunedin branch works with a range of people who have visual and invisible disabilities. RDA Dunedin has three separate strands, providing therapy, education or social therapy. Each person coming into RDA has an individualised program established for them, which includes goals for physical, emotional, mental, and social abilities. This could be areas such as providing an outlet for a child in grief, encouraging development of core strength, developing self-regulation, or improving social conversational skills. Children may come for a school term, or for years, depending on their needs. However there is a goal for each rider, and once they have achieved their goal they can move into mainstream riding.
Working with schools RDA helps ākonga develop skills that increase their confidence and enable them to thrive in a mainstream environment. While there are practical skills developed, including building the strength to sit on a chair or hold a pencil, improved concentration, and the ability to self-regulate, there are other by-products like having a topic to discuss that is of interest to peers.
The are no restrictions on where referrals can come from, so parents or children can self-refer. However, the number of horses, volunteers, and space does limit the number of people who can be enrolled. The therapeutic lessons are subsidised by mainstream classes, however, these are still out of the reach of many who could benefit.
Additionally, there is a limit to mainstream classes that can be offered, again due to the number of horses available, and these horses have to be carefully selected to be suitable for unpredictable riders.
Working with coaches who are trained in therapeutic horse riding, and horses that are trained to work with a variety of riders, those coming to RDA Dunedin are able to work on specific skills to help them achieve individual goals. Each goal is very personal to the individual and is created by the coach in conjunction with the rider and teacher, parent, or other support people. Also considered is current research on best practices and lived experiences for therapeutic horse riding. The aim is to develop the skills and abilities of the rider, not to make them fit a predetermined mould.
Being able to self-refer removes some of the barriers, but it is still expensive and a high time commitment, so having the support of schools and other agencies is vital.
From the RDA website: Therapeutic Horse Riding is of benefit to children and adults with a wide range of challenges, needs or disabilities, including but not limited to: Autism Spectrum Disorders, Cerebral Palsy, Cystic Fibrosis, CVA (stroke), Down Syndrome, Intellectual Disability, Learning Disability, Hearing and Visual Impairments, Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy, Spina Bifida and Spinal Cord Injury (Para/Quadriplegia). New Zealand Riding for the Disabled. (2021)
Working one Tuesday each week over a term I was able to establish connections with the riders who came regularly, as well as with the horses – both relationships are vitally important. As was pointed out by my assessor in Practicum 1, I can be a little exuberant. While ākonga come to RDA to improve their self-regulation, I found that my self-regulation too improved.
As the lead, it was my job to keep both horse and rider calm, engaged, and safe. This meant I couldn’t be overly excitable. Having to be aware of the needs of my horse and my rider, keep their goals in mind, as well as keep vigilant for things that may distress horse or rider (such as birds running across the arena roof or trains tooting), kept my mind too busy to allow for exuberance.
I was taught to tack up and groom horses, bring them in from paddocks, how to walk them safely around cars and pedestrians, as well as how to safely sidewalk and lead a horse. This meant learning how to check that a rider was balanced, being able to remind them how to position themselves, their reigns and their heels, as well as understanding the importance of stirrup positioning for different needs. A rider who was learning to balance might have shorter stirrups than one that needed to focus on developing core strength.
Like any new area, there is a lot to learn, and I could happily spend a lifetime learning about horses, humans and how the two interact to improve lives.
I started working with A in Term 4 of 2022, at this stage they had already had a couple of terms with RDA. One of the main goals was building core strength. Working with this rider required originally required two people, as they were unable to safely keep themselves on their horse. By the time I was working with A they were able to work with just one person with a lead rope, however, I did have to ensure I was constantly monitoring their position as A will slowly start to drift sideways without realising.
This ākonga was building confidence and loved to chat. Although my hearing processing issues sometimes make understanding them difficult, we managed to chat our way around the arena, following a path that required balancing. I would notice they had slipped sideways, and would woah our horse Feathers, and ask ākonga to notice how they were sitting.
I was delighted to come back in to work a volunteer session at the end of term 1 in 2023 and catch up with most of the riders I had worked with earlier. The change in all of them was profound, one child who was too scared to get on to a horse in term 4 who was now helping to tack up their horse, another who was riding off lead, and A who was riding with so much confidence and strength that they could self-adjust as their horse was walking.
During my practicum, my assessor made the comment that I am exuberant and need to be the calm in the classroom. While I become calm in high-stress situations, I tend to create chaos if there is none. However, one thing you can’t be around horses is overly excitable. As Eaude (2011) suggests, nurturing emotional intelligence requires calm and stillness.
This is one area that is a goal for some of the riders, developing their emotional regulation, learning to use calm language, and using controlled body movements. As the person leading the horse, I needed to be aware of the interactions between my rider and horse, as well as obstacles in the arena. I am not a “horse person”, so learning how to look after and communicate with horses was a learning curve – and one that the riders I worked with were often happy to help me with.
While there is a lot of learning on the job, I was also able to undertake online learning through “The Stable”, and I have maintained access to this, so can continue adding to my kete of knowledge. I love learning in a hyper-fixated manner, so am excited by having access. This includes units around working with horses, but the main focus is on the people, so the first course completed covered:
Before working with RDA I had experience with their mainstream riding program, which is used to subsidise their therapy work. However, I hadn’t realised the range of difficulties that RDA provides equine therapy for. I was under the mistaken impression that there was a focus on extreme intellectual or physical disabilities. What I found was that RDA equine therapy was effective with children who were experiencing a diverse range of difficulties ranging from grief, struggling to understand social norms, children with ADHD who wanted to learn to stay calm, or children with dyslexia who needed to build confidence in themselves and build a sense of achievement.
In addition to the obvious increased understanding of what happens at RDA, this experience has given me another area of potential connection. Having developed some of the terminology associated with horses and riding, and being more than happy to chat about my favourite horses and their temperaments.
Knowing that this therapy is available has made me start to think about other alternative options and ways to ensure that all ākonga are given opportunities to find calm, develop their sense of achievement, and have an outlet for expressing emotions.