Helping Hooves
Non-profit equine therapy assists riders with disabilities
COLLEGEVILLE >> It’s always a pretty amazing feat when an animal can help a person through a healing or learning process.
No one knows that feeling better than the workers, students and maybe even the horses at Sebastian Riding Associates in Collegeville.
The non-profit, located at 3589 Water Street Road, has been operating since 1975 and offers equine assisted therapy programs for children and adults living with a variety of physical, mental health and intellectual disabilities. Students work with staff members that include physical therapists or instructors to learn about the animals and work with them through a healing process or to hone specific skill sets.
“We do equine assisted learning and therapies for people with disabilities,” explained Chris Hanebury, executive director of Sebastian Riding Associates. “What that means is very different for every student and their ability and skill set. So some people it is simply riding skills. Other students it is using the horse’s movement to be able to allow them to focus on other activities like speech,” said Hanebury.
Programs include therapeutic riding, which helps students physically with posture, coordination and muscle tone as well as educationally by emphasizing the development of thinking and communication skills, task orienting, increased focus and basic riding proficiency, grooming, and tacking.
The ways in which these horses can assist people is truly remarkable, according to Instructor and Program Manager Jenny Dec.
“Some riders, particularly people with autism, seek input like rocking or other behaviors. Those movements are theoretically to figure out where the body is in space. The horse has the movement on his back so when you put a rider on the horse, they’re automatically getting input from the horse,” explained Dec.
“They’re getting the horse moving up and down, back and forth, so now their body is getting the input that they need and a lot of times for people with autism, they’re able to focus on other things because they’re not having to focus on getting this input,” she said.
The organization just recently became the first equine assisted therapy program in the country to receive an autism center designation from the International Board of Credentialing and Continuing Education Standards after every staff member completed at least 14 hours of training specifically on autism.
Sebastian Riding Associates also offers opportunities such as their hippotherapy program. The program helps students use the movements of the horse to “provide a foundation of improved neuromotor functioning and sensory processing that translates to daily activities.” These sessions are conducted with a physical therapist and therapeutic riding instructor to help with physical goals of improved posture, balance, mobility and function in select clients who possess movement dysfunctions.
“Both of our physical therapists will tell you that they can get more out of a student on a horse for 45 minutes than they can in a clinical setting because it’s fun. Students don’t know what’s happening because they’re being involved in other activities,” said Hanebury.
The non profit also has a Riding Free program, which started out as a research study for adolescents with post traumatic stress. The program is a 12-week research study with Arcadia University geared toward helping adolescents with PTSD build trust and relationship skills, self confidence and autonomy. Additionally, the organization offers summer camps and an introduction to horses.
But to make these programs effective, both staff and the horses they work with need specific skill sets to be successful. In addition to looking for potential staff members with both a physical therapy background and some experience with horses, staff have to look all over for horses that match requirements for the program. Currently, three full time staff work for the nonprofit along with 12 part time instructional staff and several volunteers.
“It’s a very specific skill set that we need for instructing here so it’s really hard to find people that not only have the horse background but also have and are interested in pursuing the disability education required to be successful at this job. We can’t just put an ad in the paper,” said Hanebury.
“It is an ongoing project to find horses that can do this job. There are certain things we look for to bring them into the program and then we’ll train them and help them learn the specific things they may need. It’s fun that we have such a variety because we can choose whether to use a horse that’s going to give a rider more input or a horse that is very smooth. There’s also the height and weight ratio and whether to use a horse with a wide back or a narrow back. The fun thing too is matching mentalities with students,” explained Dec.
Dec and Hanebury said they receive the horses from many different places. In a lucky situation a horse may be donated or leased to the facility but in many other cases the group receives grants to purchase them.
The group works exclusively as a therapeutic riding program. Any individual interested in signing up for programs at Sebastian Riding Associates can visit the website sebastianriding.org and fill out the prospective riders application under “Our programs,” which includes a brief medical history, physician’s prescription, registration form, emergency release form and release and permission form. Physical therapists at the facility will then evaluate students on and off a horse and determine goals of the student. A determination will then be made whether a student should take part in a therapeutic riding program with an instructor or in a hippotherapy setting with a physical therapist.
Students who participate in sessions pay a fraction of what the program costs to run. Prices have remained the same for 10 years, according to Hanebury.
“This should not be something available to people of financial means. It should be available to anybody who is going to benefit from it. That is and remains the philosophy of our board and our organization, to make it available,” said Hanebury. “We subsidize approximately $30 for every lesson we charge. We subsidize them through grants, fundraising events and through donations. We don’t receive any federal, state, county money at all.”
Those fundraising events include their upcoming Derby, Dine and Dance event on May 4 as well as their Legs for Lindsey 5K in August. Individuals can also donate any time by visiting their website under “Ways to Give.”
“We’ve been really fortunate in that the program has been growing. I think people in this day and age are more in tune with alternative therapies than they’ve ever been and equine therapy has been getting a decent amount of face time and people are looking into it,” said Hanebury.