This semester, graduate clinicians at Longwood’s Speech, Hearing and Learning Services (SHLS) are participating in Heartland Horse Heroes (HHH), a therapeutic riding program with the mission to provide and support equestrian activities for individuals who have mental, physical, emotional, social challenges or learning disabling conditions. Under the supervision of Caitlin Frank (clinical supervisor at SHLS) and LaRue Dowed, (therapeutic riding instructor at HHH), the graduate students provide both direct and indirect speech-language therapy to a group middle school students with special needs. The focus of the partnership is to increase the students’ functional communication, language and social skills through hands on experience in a high interest, natural setting.
Graduate students shown in the following video include Dallas Phelps,Morgan Sullivan,Natalie Dean and Summer Chenault.