Out to Help Children’s Services
The main goal of Out to Help at Higher Farm is to provide opportunities for the young
people who are failing in the traditional mainstream classroom setting to obtain career
opportunities, academic credit and work experience. One of the centres goals is to help
young people overcome barriers to learning and success. It is increasingly important to help
young peo
ple discover and recognise their strengths so that they are able to build their self-esteem and confidence in order to learn. This is done through methods aimed at helping
and encouraging at-risk young people, such as:
• Reducing the alienation of at-risk young people
• Giving young people an opportunity to access desirable roles (through the use of
horses and agricultural) to increase motivation.
• Surround education with emphasis on the importance of how school will prepare
young people for later life
• Provide a positive success-oriented program to obtain academic and employability
skills. In this program, we look to keep our student/staff ratio very low, usually one to one,
allowing for more individualised instruction. We are then better able to create a young
person-centred approach and therefore become sensitive to a different variety of learning
styles. This environment created for the individual aims to be caring and adaptive to
individual needs and wants. The centre will work closely with each young person to assess
their personal needs in order to develop an individualised plan. Emphasis is placed upon
helping young people develop a sense of responsibility by using the animals on site. It is the
young person’s duty to feed, water, exercise and generally look after the animals. Each
young person has their own animal/s in which they care for – the level of care that they give
to the animals is determined on the individual and we look to grow this as they spend more
time with us. For example, they may start by only riding one horse but within a few months
they will be feeding them, watering as well as weighing and tracking the animal’s health. The teachers and support staff within the centre offer an extended role to mainstream
education where they support the child as a whole and not just academically; they also
support the young person mentally and with any challenges they are facing outside of the
centre. It is important for young people to
recognise their strengths and how to use these in later life. The centre creates a positive
environment with a sense of belonging and community, this leads to the young people
finding it easier to commit to the set of expectations and standards of behaviour. To conclude, our purpose is to give young people a positive place of belonging where they
can grow to transform their futures.
