WHAT IS STABLE MOMENTS®?
Stable Moments® is a structured equine-assisted mentorship program that matches …
• 1 community mentor, with
• 1 foster or adopted child, and
• 1 horse, for
• 1 hour per week (aligned with a 10-month school year)
… to develop life skills for healthy transitions into adulthood.
Following an intake assessment, an individualized plan of care (IPC) is prepared for each child and is color coded for the life skill areas they will be working on. Community mentors select session activities based on those colors.
To track progress, each mentor completes an activity log at the end of each session. We also collect pre-test and post-test data for life skill improvement and complete progress summaries at the mid-point and end of each program year.
THE CHILDREN WE SERVE…
The Stable Moments model is specifically designed for children in foster care or who have been adopted. These children have experienced childhood trauma caused by abuse, neglect and/or abandonment.
Childhood trauma affects brain development and how we approach our work must take this trauma into account if we are going to provide healing during mentor sessions.
Many of the children we serve come from tough beginnings. Suffering abuse or neglect, being moved around or not being with your biological parents can cause an unstable foundation. Many of the “poor behaviors” exhibited from these children are rooted in trauma.
Check out this gripping YouTube video to better understand the experience of a child who is removed from the only home he/she knows and forced to navigate the foster care system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOeQUwdAjE0
WHY MENTORSHIP?
Many people look at the Stable Moments model and think that it must be the amazingly therapeutic nature of a horse that brings stability to the foster and adopted children in the program. While we can agree, the nature of a horse is therapeutic in itself, the real science is behind the mentor relationship.
Through Stable Moments we keep the “I Matter Factor” at the core of everything we do. This is a theory that children shouldn’t be asked to learn or develop life skills until we have shown them they matter.
Many children, who have survived trauma, carry core feelings of worthlessness. Why would anyone make “good” choices if they didn’t believe they mattered? Mentorship is one important way we show youth they matter!
A mentor who can take one hour a week out of their busy schedule to show up, be engaged and provide a stable moment for a child in an unsettled world promotes a feeling of “I Matter!”
These children are used to constant change and interactions with a community that often doesn’t understand them. Providing some stability, a positive role model and a trauma-informed approach creates the perfect environment for these children to develop the life skills necessary to make healthy transitions into adulthood.
WHY HORSES?
Most of us can attest to the fact that animals are healing in nature. Lots of people who hear about the Stable Moments program mention how therapeutic their dog or cat is for them. Although we can agree that all animals have therapeutic qualities, we also understand that horses are inherently suited to help heal trauma.
Horses are particularly fitting for children who have experienced early childhood trauma due to the specific correlations between their characteristics. Because horses are prey animals, they are always in survival mode. Just like the kids we serve, horses constantly scan, sense and assess their environment for threats. Horses are in survival mode so much that they even sleep standing up, and they’re instinctively ready to flee if they need to.
Because horses can sense small changes in their environment, they are naturally attuned to the energy around them. They have an innate ability to sense our emotions and uncover things about ourselves that we may not even know. Horses help us get to know ourselves better.
In order to survive their ever changing environments, children in foster care tend to present themselves based on what they think others want. When we approach a horse as a version of ourselves, pretending to be other than we are, a horse sees far beyond our outer presentation and deep into our true selves. It takes horses only a moment to see right through any “mask” we may be wearing, find our soul, and say “there you are”. Such authenticity in our connections with horses can be so powerful and effective when recognized and fully appreciated for what it is, and what it offers when we partner with horses!
INTAKE ASSESSMENTS
The first step to enrolling a child in a Stable Moments® program is an intake assessment. This is an interview where the program director can get to know the guardian and details about the child to understand if he/she is a good fit for equine assisted learning. This is also a time where we make sure parents and guardians feel welcome, understood and applauded for trying to get their child some support.
The intake assessment is a casual conversation where we learn about the child’s history, current challenges, strengths, interests and who might be an ideal mentor match. We also like to get to know our foster and adoptive parents and understand their journey, why they chose to foster or adopt and what their parenting experience has been like.
This intake assessment is essential in providing services tailored to each child’s unique needs. We use the information gathered in this appointment to develop individualized plans of care for each kiddo.
PLANS OF CARE
The Stable Moments program structure is based on the needs of children, families and mentors. This structure helps each mentor focus on building relationship with the child – engaging in fun activities – while simultaneously working on essential life skills development.
Our focus on individualized attention enables accelerated and specialized life skill development. Although many symptoms of trauma look the same, each child has a very personal, distinct history that deserves to be honored and acknowledged. With different trauma histories, foster placements, and therapeutic experiences, these children need tailored plans of care that address the intricacies of their strengths, challenges, diagnoses and goals.
Each child in the program has a plan of care designed for them based on their intake interview. Each individualized plan of care has specific, measurable objectives as well as color coded life skill focus areas which enable a mentor to choose from our color coded activities and know they are addressing the child’s specific needs. Those who go through the Stable Moments certification program learn how to construct these individualized plans of care.
OUR ACTIVITIES
During each hour session, mentors work with their youth to make a three part plan. The three part plan consists of a connection activity, life skill development activity and a transition activity. The Stable Moments® Activity Pack offers individually laminated activities for the life skill development component of the three part plan. By having the child build their plan they feel in control, independent and it is easier to redirect them back to a plan they created.
Our activities are trauma-informed, fun, equine and non-equine that work on life skills in a non-clinical way. Each activity has an objective, directions, and life skill color areas that can be matched with the plan of care. They also have discussion questions so mentors know how to spark meaningful communication during activities.
Our activities were built because mentors would often engage a child in a task with little discussion and say “ok, we’re done, what’s next?” This activity structure equips them to make every task a therapeutic one adding in small elements to address life skill goals and making sure they have rich conversation before, during and after completion.
HOW WE TRACK PROGRESS
So mentors have shown up to their session, made a three part plan with their youth, engaged in a connection, life skill development and transition activity and have experienced special moments. Now what?
We train each one of our mentors to develop rich activity logs to describe how they worked toward plan of care goals.
This way we are able to capture all the healing moments that happen and make sure mentors are responding appropriately.
Program directors are then able to take all the weekly logs and develop them into progress summaries, creating a picture of the progress made over the 10-month program. This not only helps us communicate our impact, but also shows parents, kids and mentors how far they’ve come!
DEMONSTRATING IMPACT
Activity logs and progress summaries are nice for collecting all those qualitative nuggets of how the Stable Moments program works and the profound impact it is having on the children we serve, but we can’t deny that program supporters like numbers. They want to know how many kids are better off because of the program, so we use pre- and post- assessment (test) data comparison to track our success.
When kids start our program, their guardian fills out an evaluation that scores the youth on six (6) areas of life skills. At the end of the 10-month program they complete the same assessment. This enables us to compare scores to determine tangible growth in the six life skill areas.
Preliminary data from Stable Moments locations has already shown meaningful growth! Participant guardians have reported higher self-regulation, independence, and responsibility scores for their kids after participating in the program. Having these results available helps individual locations demonstrate their quantifiable value and positive impact within their surrounding communities.
In addition, the pre- and post- test data is also reported up and combined across all Stable Moments locations. This helps Stable Moments as an organization demonstrate its far-reaching beneficial impact, nationally and even internationally. In time it will also help secure funds for a formal research study to make the Stable Moments program an evidence based model!
