Run by psychologists, teachers, trained SENCos, specialists in outdoor education and rehabilitation, and qualified bushcraft instructors, at the centre we aim to provide the opportunity for the young people we work with to have positive experiences and genuine successes.
We typically cater well for young people who are struggling to engage with learning and the school environment or young people with disability. We aim to offer learning and rehabilitation, but also to improve mental health and well-being through our structured programmes of learning and therapeutic interventions.
Our practical activities promote skill development in relation to attention, problem-solving, and communication in the social setting. Hence we cater for young people with most levels of additional need. We cover a wide-ranging and complex area, so we welcome questions about the support we can offer.
We are committed to providing personalised learning and therapeutic opportunities for children and young people who attend the centre. When appropriate, we can offer activity and engagement programmes to support and augment this process. To ensure that we complement the young person's existing provision we work collaboratively with children and young people, family, teachers and specialists.
We offer a wide choice of activity-based programmes for children and young people working at a range of levels. We offer imaginative and flexible ways of optimising a young people’s knowledge and skills development. We design and implement ‘personalised learning plan’s setting out programmes to meet individual needs, interests and aspirations.
Children can attend 1, 2 or 3 days each week from 10am-to-3pm, for 5 hours a day (but they do have to be booked-in for their chosen number of days for a whole term).
We promote Health & Wellbeing, Emotional & Social Intelligence and Flexible & Creative Thinkingthrough a range of bespoke activities including:
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Surf therapy in the warmer weather. We are just a few minutes from the beautiful beach of Sandymouth. We have an in-house qualified Surf Instructor and two qualified beach lifeguards on the staff-team- and of course we love to surf ourselves.
- Walks from our woodland to the beach through the woodland in Coombe Valley (we are located in a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty).
- Archery from a dedicated Archery range and professional instructors who teach our young people long-bow and crossbow skills.
- Woodwork and forestry tool-use.
- Science conservation and environmental studies we work with the Rivers Trust in conducting river surveys.
Our approach is evidence-based
We have published our research around the world. In 2023 we presented our findings on how Haven Wood improves outcomes for children with special educational needs at the International Brain Injury Association 14th World Congress on Brain Injury. In 2024 we published an international Journal paper. See: Full article: ‘Release them into the wild, but how far can they go?’ Improving social and emotional mental health through teaching bushcraft skills to children with special educational needs and disability: a preliminary case series evaluation study
In our study, the children who attended and participated in what we do improved from clinically significant levels of anxiety and emotional difficulties to healthy levels of well-being within just 5 weeks. Participating in our therapeutic provision can work as a kind of ‘dose effect’ that enabled the children to engage better in learning and other areas of life outside of our centre. Obviously, this approach cannot work for all children, but we see many individual successes from our work.
At a practical and learning level, the bushcraft & woodland programme covers a wide range of practical and applied bushcraft knowledge and skills including shelter building, fire lighting, animal/ wildlife awareness, woodland trees and plant ID, campfire cooking and cordage/ knots.
As psychologists as well as teachers, our real intention is to improve wellbeing, promote mental health recovery and help children to develop a greater sense of agency and resilience. Lots of children, especially those not attending school, feel socially isolated and have a very poor sense of personal and social identity. They don’t feel that they belong, or that they are good in a group. Years of research on group identity processes demonstrates that when children are given structured activity, with clear social roles, there are benefits for such children.
We use clinical measures of wellbeing and mental health to monitor improvements in the children who attend our courses. Our own preliminary research indicates that even after a short period of intervention there is measurable improvement for the children.
Each attendee needs a referal, we encourage telephone and email enquiry and our clinical psychologist may require additional information to assess the applicant for suitability, or in order to inform the activity programme we select for the attendee. In this regard we can accept young people with fairly complex needs by negotiation.
Support workers and Teaching assistants are welcome to attend with their attendee, their attendance is free. We ask you to make a referal via our referal form.
