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| Connie introduces our first SHOUT talk of the season |
After thinking that no-one would
turn out for our first SHOUT event as the first biggest storm of the autumn
seemed to be pounding at our doorstep; we nonetheless ended up having a
fantastically well attended event. A variety of people from all sorts of
different organisations attended, including representation from the local
Sheffield therapeutic gardening group SAGE green fingers.
Joe talked about many of the
different benefits and ways in which therapeutic gardening can impact upon
social behaviour, defining its use as a ‘structured and beneficial intervention’
quite separate from leisure or domestic gardening. He acknowledged that
although he himself is not an OT having in fact a pharmaceutical background,
therapeutic gardening can be seen to draw on many OT models and frameworks.
Joe gave us a tour projects that
he had been involved in and some other therapeutic gardens which enabled us to
see how what we would consider the ordinary everyday make-up of the garden
could be used to facilitate recovery. An ordinary garden path for example could
be used to represent progression, a journey or a story of some kind.
We were shown one of Joe's recent
research projects carried out by the charity THRIVE, assessing the impact of horticultural therapy on
various aspects of an individual’s functioning such as communication, social
interaction, motivation, engagement and fine motor skills. To measure these Joe
used INSIGHT which provides a single score for each aspect of functioning that
was being measured, and Joe explained how this was carried out.
The
results of the study showed that there was a significant improvement in the
areas of social interaction, motivation and task engagement when individuals
were assessed at 12 months; however this effect began to 'fade' after this time
with individuals scores reducing in this area.
After a comfort break, and a
chance for the attendees to mingle and chat with each other, Joe took questions
based on his talk. The audience were interested in what could potentially cause
this fading in the skills that individuals were developing as a result of the
horticultural therapy and Joe explained that it could be due to a variety of
factors. One of these was the impact of individuals leaving the therapy
programme once they were ready, leaving those with the lower scores on
measurements of functioning still in the programme, this lead to a discussion
about research methods.
This was a brilliant way to begin this academic year of SHOUT events, we have received some fantastic feedback about the talk and we would like to thank Joe for his time. We are now excited for our next talk, though hopefully the weather will have improved and no one will be battling high wind and rain to attend!
