Darach Social Croft green health programme

Dr Sara Bradley (UHI)

Sarah and Hugh moved to Darach croft on the Ardnamurchan peninsula in West Lochaber in 2017.  They already had 15 years’ experience of providing support to individuals with mental, emotional and behavioural issues; learning disabilities, autism and neurodiversity; experience of care; drug and alcohol problems and histories of offending behaviour.  Sarah also had previous experience of care farming.  Bringing all these skills together, they decided to open as a ‘care farm’ or social croft offering therapeutic opportunities to work with the animals. 

In 2022 Darach Social Croft secured funding from the Highland Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund to run a programme of care farming activities to promote mental well-being and tackle social isolation.  Sarah and Hugh were the primary therapeutic practitioners leading the delivery of the sessions.  They were aimed at young people and adults over 16 years old living in Lochaber and experiencing stress, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, loneliness, social isolation and/or would just benefit from time spent in a relaxing and different environment.  The activities were tailored to accommodate all ages and abilities as well as individual preferences:

“We’re there to meet their needs, not create a service that they’ve got to fit into, if we want to have a service that is built around the people that come.“

The sessions were promoted amongst local health care professionals so that they could refer patients directly or via a Community Link Worker based in a GP surgery.  Over the course of a year they ran 6 week programmes involving half day sessions for small groups of up to six participants which featured the following range of activities on the working croft:   

• Spending time with farm animals and learning about animal care
• Feeding the animals
• Forest-bathing
• Horticultural skills like planting, growing and maintaining plants and vegetables
• Conservation and ecology activities

The aim was to improve participants’ mental health and well-being and increase their ‘psychological capital’ including hopefulness, self-confidence and self-esteem.  It was also an opportunity to increase their social network through working as part of a group.  The aim was that this increase in self-confidence and self-esteem would act as a bridge to enable participants to access other local community services.  This type of intervention can also promote a sense of self-management and health ‘maintenance’.

Feedback

We carried out 11 interviews with healthcare professionals and participants as well as the session leaders.  The leaders adopted a non-judgemental approach which does not focus on problems or diagnosis.  Interviewees praised them for being approachable, kind and flexible.  Participants were motivated by being outside, appreciated the benefits to their health and expressed a high degree of satisfaction with the programme.  Being with the animals and forest bathing were particularly calming and reduced stress.  Participants liked the tailored nature of the sessions and the fact they were not forced to do anything that they did not want to do.  Participation is inherently a ‘big ask’ for people experiencing real challenges and stresses related to health and the cost of living.  Where formal referrals were received, they worked well but most participants self-referred having found the opportunity through social media.  However, the leaders recognise that not everyone who could benefit has the confidence or motivation to self-refer and a degree of ‘hand-holding’ is required to support that individual to participate.

Participants described their experiences and the impact of the activities:

“You start to feel you’re more connected to nature, more there in the present moment with it, noticing things you might not even have noticed before in your life … it just makes your whole body, your mind and spirit feel alive.”

“Life-changing” and “better than pills.”

“Pulls you out of thought turning and old stories and stuff.”

“Saved my week by a million miles.  I would come back from it and feel like a completely different person and it would last a couple of days after of just feeling … like I had been lifted.”

Barriers

There were fewer formal referrals than anticipated and a range of potential contributory factors were put forward by interviewees including patient acceptance, patient motivation, fear of stigma in small communities, travel distance, costs of transport, lack of childcare, referrer time constraints, referrer knowledge, data sharing issues and not always having Community Link Workers in place. 

Intervention development

Suggestions for further development focused on increasing the advertising as well as offering promotional taster sessions and more outreach to overcome the transport barriers.  When services are largely grant funded and short-term rather than commissioned and longer-term, it is more difficult to run regular sustainable programmes.  Routine and continuity are important for participants, so having the resources to provide a reliable weekly service is key “so their worlds are not turned upside down when the next social crofting programme comes to an end.”

Impact

Caring for the animals was a key feature of the programme.  Being on a working croft enabled people to take part in meaningful, relaxing and mindful activities, which drew them away from focusing on their problems and the stresses of their daily lives.  The resultant sense of purpose helped to boost self-confidence, foster a feeling of connection and increase mental well-being.

For more information please contact Hugh Asher: hugh@socialcroft.co.uk; Sara Bradley: sara.bradley@uhi.ac.uk (research)