We work with young people who for many different reasons struggle to recognise, regulate and control their emotions and in turn their behaviour. Working with the young people on our emotional regulation programme helps the children to explore how they are feeling, understand why they are feeling that way and start to put strategies in place to effectively manage their anger and outbursts.
Animal Assisted Interventions have been shown to reduce challenging behaviour in children and adolescents, whilst increasing psychological functioning
Our school dogs have a positive effect on reducing negative behaviour and can significantly help reduce the number of disruptive and violent outbursts in the classroom. The figure below shows the average difference in reports of bullying and disruptive outbursts between an ‘average day’ compared to a CAL intervention day. We believe this reduction is a reflection of the physical calming effect of our dogs, as animals have been shown to act as a social buffer to the impact of psychosocialstress (O’Haire, McKenzie, Beck & Slaughter, 2015)
Figure 2. The change in number of reported bullying and disruptive behaviour incidents over a one-week period when receiving a CAL intervention.
