Examining Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy as a Complement to Standard Care for Foster Youth in Residential Treatment

The project represents a university-community partnership among FIU-BRIDGE, Nova Southeastern University’s (NSU) Family Therapy Program, Stable Place, a non‐profit in its fifth year of providing equine facilitated psychotherapy in the community, and the SOS Children’s Village, a foster child residential treatment facility. This project is offering Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy as an adjunctive treatment for South Florida foster youth in a residential treatment program. We will examine the impact of participation on the participant’s quality of life including self‐confidence, self-efficacy, mindfulness and interpersonal relations, as well as anxiety and depressive symptoms. The specific clinical training model proposed will provide a consistent, theoretically based approach to EFP (Green, in press, 2014, 2013, 2011). The EFP clinical model utilizes a number of Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association (EAGALA)‐based and other standard equine facilitated activities (Faa‐Thompson, 2012; Trotter, 2012); however, the clinical processing of those activities is consistently informed by systemic, brief therapy traditions (Cade & O’Hanlon, 1993; Hoyt, 1996) and was developed by Dr. Green at NSU.