AAI 3 | Implementing Animal Assisted Interventions with Diverse Populations

This course pulls together aspects of the previous courses to focus on practical applications of Animal Assisted Interventions. It explores the wide range of programs involving animal partners across fields of human services including health care, education and social work activities with diverse human populations such as people with disabilities and/or trauma, veterans, and urban youth. Animal Assisted Therapy approaches integrating evidence-based and best-practice methods with animal partners are explained through specific case examples with diverse youth including refugee, LGBTQ, and sexual abuse survivors using individual, family and group modalities. Participants learn how to create culturally sensitive treatment or lesson plans that include animal partners and effectively verbalize the clinical meaning of animal/human interactions to further clients’ therapeutic goals. This course shares examples of how to track and evaluate progress, document sessions, and evaluate effectiveness. It also explores the need for further research in the field.