Stable Lives - Growing Our Reach

Aim

We want to support adults and children who are reaching out for help from us and also create a magical Christmas for disadvantaged families

Stable Lives is a mental health charity that uses Equine and land-based courses and respite days, to support adults, children and families. The horses and ponies used within the courses have all been rehabilitated by us from serious cases of either mental or physical abuse. The aim of the courses are to build confidence, self-esteem and self-worth, but also to encourage participants to realise that there is more to life than just surviving. Our unwavering focus is to shine light into dark areas and give people a vision and optimism for their future.

 The charity was born out of personal experiance in witnessing the devastating effect that mental health trauma can have on an individual and their family.

The charity has since grown and developed massively over the last few years but we have only just begun! We now provide courses for adults from the military, blue light services, victims of crime and those within our community who need support. We also provide 1:1 courses for vulnerable children and young adults. We take referrals from parents, social services, foster services, schools and the police amongst others. Feedback from adult and child courses talk of their time with us having literally saved their lives and that Stable Lives has been the key to recovery where other support had failed. 

Underpinning our whole approach is how we bring the rescue horses into the courses. They have the ability to reach into lives that are otherwise shut off from society. An example of this would be a military veteran who came after trying to take his own life. He had lost his family, his home and was living in a hostel. On completion of the course, he spoke of being days away from taking his own life but having met his pony and completing the course, he knew that he had a future. He now has a family, a home and is part of newly formed peer support team.

Demand for our courses and respite days are significantly increasing. Initially, we were running two 2 adult courses a year; we now run one within every half-term and we now have a waiting list. for the first time recently I have had to have a waiting list. We recognise that early help and support is vital to recovery and flourishing. The demand for our children and youth offering is exceptionally high. We know we can offer support quicker than other services, but recently wait times have started to increase due to demand. Schools are bringing groups on a regular basis and we are getting daily referrals daily for children in crisis. This month we have also launched a youth group that acts as a post-support service for our children and youth courses, whilst also providing ongoing support for children recovering, in long term foster care or vulnerable groups requiring nurture. On launch evening 38 attended with 15 more signed up and the impact was happy children and parents commenting ‘they have a safe place to come and relax’. 

We are deeply excited for the future. All who work at Stable Lives believe (and hear!) that we are making a difference, but we are highly ambitious and want to help and support others. We have dreams of growing the charity so that we can have bases throughout the country. We want to be able to make the difference that we are making in our community throughout the United Kingdom.

Your funding will help those dreams become a reality. 

This project successfully funded on 4th November 2022