Trauma-Informed Care Farming
Simple Sparrow’s Trauma-Informed Care Farming is a training tool designed to help you build your own trauma-informed care farm model that is tailored to meet the needs of the community you serve.
All proceeds from this training go back to Simple Sparrow Care Farm, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, to help provide care farm programs and services for vulnerable and marginalized individuals.
“Potato farms grow potatoes; care farms grow care.”
Since 2017, trauma-informed care farming programs and services have been developed and evaluated at Simple Sparrow Care Farm for all ages, backgrounds, and abilities to “Learn + Grow + Heal.” When we teach people how to care for land, gardens, and animals, they are better equipped to care for themselves and others.
Care farms utilize farm nature for human services and measure success through therapeutic, educational, social, and vocational outcomes. Trauma-informed care farming combines research backed, practical therapeutic interventions you can apply in a farm setting for improved mental health and quality of life outcomes. This training is taken directly from our founder’s doctoral research dissertation A Development and Evaluation of Simple Sparrow Care Farm’s Executive Leadership Training Program, which demonstrates that Simple Sparrow’s trauma-informed care farm model is replicable, scalable, and yields beneficial outcomes for a diversity of populations.
Be Curious and Creative
The care farming movement is growing and adapting throughout the United States (and the world). As issues surface and new generations seek to improve upon systems that no longer serve their community, care farming offers an innovative approach to educational, therapeutic, and vocational opportunities.
Be Aware of the Limitations
As much as I love trauma-informed care farming, it is not a cure all. Raising animals, growing gardens, stewarding land, and advocating for others through a trauma-informed lens is hard work. Often, it is thankless work. But I keep doing it because I know this is the work my soul must have. If trauma-informed care farming doesn’t help you be the best version of yourself, don’t do it. Be brave to try it and be brave to try something else.
I find trauma-informed care applies to every area of life, but traumatology is still a fairly new field of research. As such, there are limits to its applications, especially trust based approaches with individuals who exhibit calloused/unemotional behaviors or who may have personality disorders. This training does not provide a thorough analysis of all trauma-informed and therapeutic interventions, but rather, a broad overview of the correlations for trauma-informed care and how to mix it into care farming.
