Communities & Farming
The Arthur Rank Centre was a founding partner of the National Care Farming Initiative set up in 2005 with Harper Adams University College, University of Essex and the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens to promote the therapeutic use of farming practices.
Care farms utilise the whole or part of a farm to provide health, social or educational care services for one or a range of vulnerable groups of people in a supervised, structured programme of farming-related activities. The movement has grown quickly in the last five years and there are now more than 170 care farms in the UK with more being set up all the time.
A new organisation, Care Farming UK, has now been launched as an independent charity to continue the work of the initiative, to support and lobby the farming industry and care commissioners and to develop policies and actions that will support care farming in the UK.
Care Farming UK, which has evolved from the National Care Farming Initiative, seeks to fulfill its vision by raising the awareness and credibility of care farming in the UK.
