About Communities For Horses

Communities For Horses (CFH) is a registered charity founded in 2017. It was set up in order to continue the innovative and pioneering outreach work of a recently closed organisation called Communities Horse and Pony Scheme (CHAPS), which had been funded by the National Lottery.

Our team includes former CHAPS’s outreach officer, Lisa Lanfear, and other members of the previous team.

Our Services to Communities

Assistance with Community Projects

We work in partnership with local authorities and other organisations to deliver projects and approaches which address the root causes of equine welfare issues.

Community Grazing Project

Our unique education programmes are tailored to meet the needs of horse owners in the deprived areas in which we work.

The main topics that we cover are:

• legislation around horse ownership
• equine psychology
• horse care, including feeding, stable management and first aid

By improving the equine handling and knowledge of horse owners, we also motivate them to learn new skills and improve their self-confidence. Previous work has shown that this can have far-reaching benefits: stronger “soft skills” and even improved performance back in school. Many of the horse owners we support are children or young adults under 25. In some cases, they have special educational needs which schools are often not well equipped to deal with. For this reason, our educational programmes are designed to serve as a good complement for either school education or home schooling and have proven very effective for children with special educational needs such as ADHD, Dyslexia and similar learning disabilities.

Case Study: A difficult child, an encouraging change

Read more about Communities For Horses and the national curriculum.

Equine welfare assistance and support

• Telephone helpline: We run a telephone helpline to provide support for horse owners and concerned members of the public regarding equine welfare. We receive regular calls from people in the community who need advice or want to flag a particular case in their neighbourhood.
• Advice on a case-by-case: When requested, we visit horse owners to assess their situation and give advice on a case-by-case basis. Our advice includes signposting of other professionals when needed. We work with other organisations, whether they exist to help humans or animals, to address the causes of problems in our community.
• Vet Days and Castration Clinics: As well as training programmes, we run vet days and castration clinics to support horse owners in improving the welfare of their animals and to stop indiscriminate horse breeding.