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Plans are under way to potentially extend the role social farming plays throughout Ireland, according to their policy adviser Dr Aisling Moroney.
“We would be very ambitious for social farming. At a minimum we’d like to see a social farm in every county in Ireland,” Moroney told the Irish Farmers Journal.
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Social farming is currently funded by the Department of Agriculture and involves participants from a range of sectors including intellectual disability, mental health, Garda youth diversion programmes, dementia services and long-term unemployed, visiting farms and taking part in farm work on a family farm.
Conference
Over 150 people attended a social farming conference in Dublin on Friday 23 March, and heard first-hand the value that social farming had brought to the lives of participants and farmers.
“I’d never worked with cattle or sheep, like that, before. When I first went on to Mike’s farm, I didn’t know what to do, but Mike showed me…and by the end of it I knew what to do. If I had my way I’d stay on a farm,” said Patrick O’Brien, a young participant in the programme from Abbeyfeale, Co Limerick.
To see good results from it was the main thing
O’Brien credits the 10-week programme with helping to build his confidence and hopes to continue farming, having developed a love of sheep and horses.
Michael O’Connell, who took on Patrick and three other participants, stated that he got as much out of the experience as the youngsters.
“To see good results from it was the main thing. To see Patrick be able to stand up on the last day of our placement, and do MC and talk to 70 to 80 people that day, to me that was just fantastic,” O’Connell said.
He added that social farming gave him “that one day a week where the buzz was back on the farm, so I didn’t look at it (social farming) as a hindrance, I enjoyed every minute of it.”
Value to participants
The success of the programme to date was apparent at the conference, with social workers involved in the programme stating it had had a significant impact on the lives of participants.
“We set objectives at the beginning of the programme and by far and away they were achieved,” Ritchie Bowen, the Fóroige youth worker on Patrick’s case said.
“We looked at empathy, impulsivity, communication – all of those skills we try to develop with the young people that we work with and definitely they were all achieved and surpassed in some cases.”
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