Good Childhood Report Summary 2024 - “Reform The School Experience…..placing pastoral support and well being on par with academic progress to unlock children’s potential and happiness.”
https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/sites/default/files/2024-08/Good%20Childhood%20Report-Summary-Report.pdf
The emotional and mental wellbeing of pupils at a school in North Yorkshire has improved thanks to the use of pet therapy, staff there have said. (BBC 19th September 2024)
Maya, a four-year-old Springer Spaniel, was introduced to Longman’s Hill Primary School, in Selby, two years ago.
Since then, she had helped reduced separation anxiety, improve attendance and reading habits among students, staff members said.
Suzanne Perkins, SEND teaching assistant at the school, said Maya was the school's "top resource" for helping children at the school.
Children need to be regulated and happy to learn.
Why dogs can be so healing for children.
A new study (PLOS Journal June 2022) suggests that spending time with therapy dogs may help lower children’s stress levels even more than relaxation exercises.
Study’s conclusion: Overall, the current research enhances knowledge in the field of HAI and AAI showing convincing evidence of lower stress in school children due to a dog intervention and this may help change public understanding of AAI, provide a basis for changes in educational practice, including public policy change and enhance the health and wellbeing of children while providing safe and welfare-oriented interventions.
See next page for more detail.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269333
Can dogs reduce stress levels in school children? effects of dog-assisted interventions on salivary cortisol in children with and without special educational needs using randomized controlled trials
Kerstin Meints ,Victoria L. Brelsford,Mirena Dimolareva,Laëtitia Maréchal,Kyla Pennington,Elise Rowan,Nancy R. Gee. Published: June 15, 2022https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269333
Prolonged or excessive stress negatively affects learning, behavior and health across the lifespan. To alleviate adverse effects of stress in school children, stressors should be reduced, and support and effective interventions provided. Animal-assisted interventions (AAI) have shown beneficial effects on health and wellbeing, however, robust knowledge on stress mediation in children is lacking. Despite this, AAIs are increasingly employed in settings world-wide, including schools, to reduce stress and support learning and wellbeing. This study is the first randomized controlled trial to investigate dog-assisted interventions as a mediator of stress in school children with and without special educational needs (SEN) over the school term. Interventions were carried out individually and in small groups twice a week for 20 minutes over the course of 4 weeks. We compared physiological changes in salivary cortisol in a dog intervention group with a relaxation intervention group and a no treatment control group. We compared cortisol level means before and after the 4 weeks of interventions in all children as well as acute cortisol in mainstream school children. Dog interventions lead to significantly lower stress in children with and without special educational needs compared to their peers in relaxation or no treatment control groups. In neurotypical children, those in the dog interventions showed no baseline stress level increases over the school term. In addition, acute cortisol levels evidenced significant stress reduction following the interventions. In contrast, the no treatment control group showed significant rises in baseline cortisol levels from beginning to end of school term. Increases also occurred in the relaxation intervention group. Children with SEN showed significantly decreased cortisol levels after dog group interventions. No changes occurred in the relaxation or no treatment control groups. These findings provide crucial evidence that dog interventions can successfully attenuate stress levels in school children with important implications for AAI implementation, learning and wellbeing.