Exciting plans to involve animals, plants and flowers in caring for children

Hi, there! We’re Jen and Karen, and we run a small ‘not-for-profit’ business called IntraQuest Community, right here on the edge of Saddleworth! IntraQuest means ‘internal journey’, and we’re dedicated to helping vulnerable children and adults overcome many mental health challenges. So many people are struggling right now – whether it’s a difficult start in life, traumatic experiences or a general lack of well-being, we provide a range of solutions to help, including:

• Play Therapy – reserved for our smallest and youngest clients;
• Filial Therapy – for families, conventional and unconventional;
• Counselling & Psycho-therapy – for young people and adults;
• Animal-assisted Therapies – our clients work with animals to build self-esteem and compassion;
• Learning – life-skills that improve interaction, confidence and relationships

We feel that supporting the people of Oldham and Greater Manchester in this way sets our community up for future success. We don’t want to see our residents as ‘cases to be managed’ – we want to help them overcome their challenges so that they can go on to live full, rich and happy lives. Everyone deserves the same chance of happiness, success and love, and it’s our aim to help broken humans re-build themselves so that they can achieve these things.

COVID-19 has hit our business quite hard. Whilst we’ve been able to move much of our counselling, learning and supervision services online, our child therapy has been more difficult. You see, ‘talking’ therapies, like counselling, aren’t appropriate for children – they don’t have the words or understanding to be able to articulate what they are going through. This is why we use play and animals with children, but of course, social distancing makes this really hard.

But fear not! We have a plan! We’ve been getting really creative over the last few months and come up with some solutions that will work. We plan to create the North West’s (possibly the whole country’s?) FIRST COVID-19-Friendly Psycho-therapeutic Centre – right here on the edge of Saddleworth Moors! Here’s how we plan to do it: Erecting free-standing ‘therapy pods’ on our land, that will allow a therapist and client a safe, socially distanced space away from any other people. Pods can be reliably cleaned after each client, and keeping the client and therapist isolated in this way means that one-on-one therapy can continue without the risk of spreading infection – pretty cool, eh?

• Outdoor Sensory Areas – also on our land, we plan to landscape sensory areas, using elements like water and earth, plants, flowers, sand and stone. This way, play therapy with our little ones can take place outside, dramatically reducing the risk of transmission!
• Expanded Animal Offerings – we also plan to increase our animal offerings and improve our outdoor pen and run facilities so that more animal interactions can take place in covered outdoor spaces, which will also enable us to offer more therapeutic services safely.

We’re sure you’ll agree that this sounds bold and exciting, and we can’t wait to share it with you! And here is what you can do to help us:

• Join and share all of our Social Media communities – and not just for updates, we also share loads of great free resources to help families and children! You’ll find us on:
  • Facebook (IntraQuest)
  • Twitter (@intraquest)
  • Instagram (intraquestcic)
  • The web (www.intraquest.co.uk)
• Check out our current crowd-funding page and help us share it – we’re especially interested in local business that may have community or charitable funding that they may wish to invest in our project. You’ll find it here: www.avivacommunityfund.co.uk/intraquest-2
• Think about any ways that you may wish to be a part of our project – we’re always on the lookout for volunteers! We’ll need help with animal care, grounds-keeping, gardening and cultivation. We would love more members of our community to get involved and be a part of our vision, and our centre will be an amazing place to spend time at when it’s finished.

It’s going to take a lot of time and money to realise our vision and create something special and unique right here in our little corner of the world. We hope you’ll help us create that bit of ‘special’ in any way you can!

For more information or to get in touch, please call us on 07831 204043 or email jenny@intraquest.co.uk.  

Author: Jude Gidney - Editor

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