Lisa Park

If your child loves horses, your first thought might be to find them a riding school, and for plenty of children that will be exactly the right thing. But there are also children and adults who desperately want to be around horses and ride but find the traditional riding-school environment difficult to access. That is where therapeutic and wellbeing riding can offer something different. What is the difference between therapeutic riding and riding lessons? The main purpose of a traditional...

We have woodland, open fields and plenty of ways to work with somebody outdoors without involving a pony, so why do we use horses? There are plenty of claims made about horses and mental health and I think we have to be careful with some of them. Horses aren't magical. We don't need to pretend they are to recognise that working alongside them can give us something very different to work with. Equine-Assisted Learning and SEND Horses are constantly paying attention to what is happening around...

I don't particularly like the term “school refusal”. Refusal makes it sound like a choice. For some children and teenagers, that isn't what is happening at all. They may want to go to school. They may want to learn. They may be worried about missing lessons, falling behind or losing their friends. And they still can't get through the door. Look at what is happening underneath attendance not at 'School Refusal' There are lots of reasons why a child might struggle to access school. Anxiety....