The document discusses developing quality criteria and impact models for social pedagogical equine-assisted interventions in Finland. There are three main types of these interventions that are offered by professionals to support social growth and well-being through human-horse interaction and social pedagogy. Quality criteria were defined that address the professional competence of instructors, implementation of social pedagogy, defining and monitoring customer goals, safety, and more. An impact model was also created that combines these quality criteria with an impact chain to allow instructors to exemplify possible outcomes and impacts of their specific services. Future research may examine data from these impact models to help choose suitable measuring instruments for intervention studies.

1. 1
DEVELOPING QUALITY CRITERIA AND
MODELLING IMPACTS FOR SOCIAL
PEDAGOGICAL EQUINE-ASSISTED
INTERVENTIONS IN FINLAND
The 17th HETI International Congress, Seoul, Korea
Maija Lipponen, Research scientist, Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), maija.lipponen@luke.fi
Twitter & LinkedIn: @MaijaLipponen
24.5.2021
Social pedagogical equine-assisted interventions are among the most established
forms of animal-assisted services in Finland. The main goals of these
interventions are in supporting social growth and well-being. The professional
orientation for the practical work arises from human-horse interaction and the
elements of social pedagogy: communality, experience and dialogue.

2. 2
DIFFERENT SERVICE TYPES
The 17th HETI International Congress, Seoul, Korea 24.5.2021
Services are offered by professionals in
education, social or health care and
they have completed additional
training in social pedagogy. As the
orientation is used to work with
different customer groups to meet a
wide range of goals, verifying the
quality and effectiveness has been
challenging. To respond this challenge,
quality criteria and impact model were
defined and published as a handbook
for practitioners.
Figure 1. Three categories in social pedagogical equine-
assisted interventions in Finland.

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QUALITY CRITERIA
The quality criteria were defined as follows:
▪ adequate professional competence and horse skills of the instructor in
relation to the service provided;
▪ implementation of social pedagogical orientation in the description of the
content of intervention;
▪ defining customer goals for intervention and monitoring their
implementation;
▪ knowledge of cooperation networks;
▪ safety aspects of the operating environment;
▪ knowledge of laws and regulations;
▪ ethics;
▪ well-being of horses.

4. 4
IMPACT MODELLING TOOL
In the model, an impact chain was
combined with the quality criteria.
It allows each instructor to
exemplify the possible outcomes
and impacts of their own service.
The impact chain is initially a
hypothesis but will be
supplemented when data about
realized outcomes is accumulated.
Different measuring methods as
standardized questionnaires can
be used for monitoring the
outcomes of the intervention.
Figure 2. Impact chain in which the quality criteria, measuring methods and research serve as
measuring instruments for the effectiveness of the equine-assisted service.
24.5.2021
The 17th HETI International Congress, Seoul, Korea

5. 5
FUTURE RESEARCH
The accumulating data of the impact models and its measures can be used in
future research. The target groups, goals, methods and expected and
detected outcomes will be examined qualitatively and quantitatively. Findings
arising from that data will be for assistance for choosing suitable measuring
instruments for an intervention study of target groups.
Acknowledgement: The Finnish association for Social Pedagogical Equine-
assisted Interventions
Reference: Lipponen, M. & Vehmasto, E. 2021. The quality and effectiveness
of social pedagogical equine-assisted interventions: Handbook. Natural
Resources Institute Finland. http://urn.fi/URN:978-952-380-175-2
The 17th HETI International Congress, Seoul, Korea 24.5.2021

6. Thank you!