An explorative study of the perceptions of social workers who are exposed to work-related, secondary traumatic experiences through their clientele, of the psychosocial support Equine Assisted Therapy (E.A.T) could provide

• Main Author: Garland, Sarah
• Other Authors: Addinall, Ronald
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: University of Cape Town 2014
• Subjects: Clinical Social Work
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/3832

Includes abstract. === Includes bibliographical references. === This study emanates from the fact that trauma is an increasing reality in our society and it has a particular focus on social workers who work with clientele that have been exposed to and who have suffered trauma. As a result and by using clinical judgment of social workers working in such environments, the social workers may have developed Secondary Traumatic Stress (S.T.S.) symptoms. Psychosocial support functions as a preventative and supportive tool for social workers and emotion-focussed programmes have beneficial effects on the psychosocial wellbeing of social workers by reducing their distress. This study will be exploring a psychosocial intervention called Equine Assisted Therapy (E.A.T.), which makes use of horses in a therapeutic model and enables clients to interact with horses on an emotional and metaphorical level that empowers clients to experience emotional and behavioural change and growth. The significance of this study is to enable the researcher to explore E.A.T. as a possible psychosocial intervention that can provide support for social workers and health care professionals alike who work in environments where they are exposed to high levels of trauma. The researcher made use of a qualitative paradigm that was explorative in nature to gain perspective of the chosen topic. The population for the study comprised of 16 social workers that work in the family violence, child welfare and sexual assault field and who attended a once-off Equine Assisted Therapy (E.A.T.) session to expose them to the therapy model being explored. The participants then volunteered for a semi-structured interview with the researcher which was digitally recorded, thereby allowing the researcher to collect the data and then analyse the data.