Animal Assisted Therapy for Special Needs Children

Due to the covid-19 pandemic, the 2020-2021 school year was another challenging and extraordinary year. We started the year as usual with groups from all sectors and populations but in January, all our activities and treatments stopped due to a general closure in the country.

Even after things opened up again, there was much instability in the running of the groups because of both children and staff members going in and out of mandatory isolation following exposure to infected people. Although some of the Program’s staff went on unpaid leave and we did not have groups, we continue to monitor and keep in touch with all our groups throughout the year.

We were in constant contact with school principals, teachers and children. We sent them letters, pictures and videos and asked after their welfare. We also continued to do our weekly staff training sessions through the zoom to support each other.

Towards the end of the school year, most groups were approved to return to the zoo and we were able to have the opportunity to finish the year in an organized manner and say goodbye to the children. Even after the return to programming, there were still some restrictions from the Ministry of Health and the Zoo’s own policies that required the AAT staff to show a lot of flexibility and creativity.

This year we had 22 weekly therapy groups.

In addition, experiential groups of special education came to the Zoo and experiential groups to the Aquarium: two groups attending weekly sessions and two groups attending a bi-weekly session