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Local Hero: Lydia Otter of Pennyhooks Farm

Lydia Otter’s career choice and lifetime passion was sparked as a teenager by watching a TV programme about music therapy. (Ecologist, June 2007)

“They played some music to an autistic child who was kicking and flapping,” she recounts, “but out came a rhythm exactly the same as my response would have been. ‘Gosh, I thought, there’s someone in there who is trying to communicate.’ ” Struck by what she had seen, Lydia decided she would train as a teacher, specialising in autism, and before she knew it she was home-teaching a handful of autistic boys.

This was fine until the boys reached the end of their schooling. Then someone asked Lydia if there was anything they could do on her family’s farm, Pennyhooks, outside Swindon. ‘It would only be a trial,’ she was assured.

Lydia has a pre-occupied yet nonchalant air, and her attention darts around, forever concerned for people and animals around her. “Having been brought up on a farm, I knew there is always something that needs doing,” she laughs. “I can be genuinely thankful to someone who can carry a bucket, and I knew that the boys could do something helpful.“ In Lydia’s eyes a glass is always half full.

And it has worked. From a handful of students on a trial basis in 2001, Lydia now provides 50 places of day care for adults with autism every week. What many of us might dismiss as a dangerously unsafe (combining autism with animals) Lydia modestly embraces with a shrug of her broad shoulders. “To share and to give is the best way to live,” she says.

This care work is an integral part of a 120acre organic beef farm, and Lydia has developed an accredited course for the students – what she calls “early work experience, so that they transfer their skills to a farm near them.” She is admired by people from all sides: farmers looking to diversify, parents wanting positive experiences for autistic children, and as a source of inspiration and ideas for people working in social care.

Until recently, few people had heard of ‘care farming,’ in which Lydia and others use farms to promote the physical health and mental well-being of people with disabilities, medical or social needs. But growing interest in green issues, and increasing media attention - especially since Monty Don’s TV programme, Growing out of Trouble, in which he sought to change the habits of drug addicts by making them work on a farm – has, according to research carried out by the University of Essex, created a growing movement about 50 farms strong, that provide around 3,000 client placements per year.

“Care Farms offer a way to revitalise the farming community, and they reawaken people’s link with farming and the land,” says Kim Jobs, a doctor on the National Care Farming Initiative’s Steering Group. “They also offer a more efficient therapeutic facility than traditional social services.”

About one percent of the population are autistic, but while some adults with autism can function well and live independently, others never develop the skills of daily living. Their needs are complex; they experience difficulties moving, are hyper sensitive to particular senses (frequently noise) and can be obsessed by small details. Not that that deters Lydia. ”If you don’t try, you’ll never know what they can achieve,” she says.

To explain how people with autism experience the world, she quotes from another of her bibles, ‘Animals in Translation.’ Its author, Temple Grandin, herself autistic, believes people with autism perceive things similarly to animals, from whom non-autistic people can therefore learn. ‘We can’t filter stuff out… for us the world is a swirling mass of tiny details.’

Through Lydia’s rural background, her research and her training at a specialist autism unit in Oxford, she has developed her prescription for people with autism: a calm space, routine, purposeful activity, and lots of practice at doing things – something that a farm, with its daily and seasonal rhythms, is ideally placed to provide. The space and freedom of being outdoors, she points out, is the opposite from the conventional treatment, where someone troubled is likely to end up in a small and secluded room.

“Everything is beautifully set up here, “ says an enthusiastic visiting parent, Charles Draper. “Lydia’s worksheets lay out the tasks that people can do, and they are broken down into manageable things. Only they are real tasks, not pretend ones. ”

“I have tried to set up a positive model”, says Lydia, “so that care managers can feel comfortable sending clients here, and can see they can achieve something they wouldn’t get anywhere else.”

The students have different degrees of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Some can be left to do tasks on their own, with limited supervision; three are leaving, to do NVQs at college; but others have additional characteristics such as Down’s Syndrome, or Repetitive Obsessive Behaviour, that makes them considerably more demanding. It may take several years to connect with the latter, admits Lydia - “You can’t see these people, but you have to believe there is a person inside” - but even they have made great strides at Pennyhooks.

“We have a boy called John, who has profound autism and no speech,” says Richard Hurford, the farm manager a former Probation Officer. “It took him weeks just to get off the bus and come down to the farm. At first we had to ferry him around in a wheelbarrow, but he would not get out. But once he was familiar with the environment he could do things. Now he feeds the animals, and is a great cook and a great gardener.”

Even more importantly, continues Richard, “As John’s skills have increased, he can lead a fuller life, which makes him happier and means he can grow as a person – it’s equipping him for life in our society.”

There have been a host of challenges during Pennyhooks’ steady but passionate growth – ontop of the everyday one of working with the students, and learning about them and their behaviour. “We’ve had to battle and battle to get funding,” admits Lydia, who has secured funding from social services, schools and colleges, charitable trusts, and the Learning and Skills Council. There are no secrets, she assures me, only repeatedly burning the midnight oil.

But as well as concrete commitment to her cause, chance has played its part. “What would you really like to happen?” asked an admiring visitor in 2001. Lydia replied that what they really needed was a portacabin classroom – and she got it. That was fine, until her numbers grew. “We had seven students a day, it was just too small. We either had to stop or to grow.”

The new purpose-built £250,000 unit is some achievement, although Lydia is modest about her role in securing it. It took her some persuading of DeFRA that the building was eligible for a farm diversification grant; she dismisses the 18-month long application process as just ‘a lot of paperwork’; and only remembers her negotiating success as an afterthought: “They offered me a 30% grant but I said they wouldn’t be able to do anything with that, and so they increased it to 40%.”

One of Lydia’s biggest successes has been the development of a Countryside Stewardship Course, which she has tailored specifically to her students. It provides structure for the students’ visits, shows others what they are capable of, and provides them with a stepping-stone to further qualifications. The course is accredited by the Open College Network, and has four modules: animal husbandry, conservation, leisure & recreation, and health and safety.

The course was developed over several months. Lydia relied on her 10 years’ experience of autism care to design all the material for her different ability students, and to make the worksheets sufficiently clear for the communication difficulties some face.
Lydia admits to the problems of working in care farming. “I am the first to meet all these battles – financial, health and safety, and others – and so am constantly having to learn new things, but without any assistance.” And as one of the movement’s success stories, she is also one of the people NCFI use to persuade people of its benefits. Not that she has the time - but, whatever people ask her, she finds it hard to say ‘No.’

It’s appreciated though. “Coming to Pennyhooks is one activity that we can do as a whole family, and have quality time together,” stresses Jane Draper. Her second son, James, is autistic, but it hasn’t stopped him and his brothers spending a happy morning planting soft fruit trees at Lydia’s.

“We’d love to use Pennyhooks more – if only Lydia had more teachers or more space,” says Maria Parsons, a carer with 16 years experience, who visits three days a week. “I’ve loved it ever since I first came here; Lydia knows what the students need, the farm is really calming and it provides the students with opportunities for things they are able to do.”

“Autism is too big a disability for a family or a school to cope with,” concludes Lydia, “it’s something that society needs to share.” She wants a commitment to care farms from the government, backed up by financial support to get people started, plus a pool of professional advice and support. “I need to spend time with the students - I can’t be expected to have all the necessary financial and other skills as well.”

Even if her wishes don’t come true, Lydia is sure to plough on regardless. Indefatigable to the end, she is on the verge of getting her Pennyhooks approach replicated at a nearby Special Needs School, and, through the Soil Association, is trying to recruit other farmers to take on similar students. “It is perfectly feasible for the idea to be copied elsewhere,” she says, emphatically. “There is land and space, there are jobs to be done, and there is a partially trained workforce – it’s got to work.”

For more information

Pennyhooks Farm, Shrivenham, Wiltshire. Tel. 01793 782436 pennyhooks.farm@virgin.net

National Care Farm Initiative www.ncfi.org.uk Tel. 01952 815330 enquiries@ncfi.org.uk

© Robert Bullard. Not for reproduction without prior permission
 

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