Dear SU! Family and Friends,
How do we know we are making an impact? In the words of Albert Einstein, "Not everything that matters can be measured."
It is often said at Saddle Up! that we have an abundance of anecdotal evidence showing that we make a transformative difference in the lives of our Adaptive Riding program participants, but it is difficult to communicate the remarkable outcomes that we see and hear about every day.
So, how do we recognize a participant's success beyond the stories? How do we quantify the good work that is done at Saddle Up!?
Our physical, occupational and speech therapists measure their participants' progress towards goals with medically-accepted assessments.
There is growing empirical evidence that both the horse's bond with humans and the horse's unique movement have a positive impact in the lives of children and adults with life challenges.
As a leader in therapeutic riding, Saddle Up! recognized a need to quantify results and developed an assessment called RIDES® that measures progress in riding competence. This program is now in use by other therapeutic riding centers across the United States.
Using a standard medical assessment tool (PEDI-CAT) for our Adaptive Riding program will help us evaluate four domains of our participants: activities of daily living, mobility, social/cognitive function, and responsibility. To measure the more qualitative benefits of therapeutic riding, we are also assessing parents’ perception of rider progress, with assistance from the LEND group, a multidisciplinary team made up of medical residents, physical therapy residents, and students from a variety of health-related professions. This work is being led by Nancy Darr, a Belmont University professor/Saddle Up! volunteer, and Beth Davidson, a Centennial Medical Center Nurse Practitioner/Saddle Up! Board member.
Our rider stories, medical assessment data, RIDES® instructor assessments, and the LEND team data will help us quantify the benefits of Adaptive Riding to promote and expand services and seek funding to support and sustain programming.
Saddle Up! remains a center of excellence, always on the forefront of improvements in the industry, and we are grateful for our community partnerships that help us innovate!
Yours truly,
Laurie Kush
