AAHEP - Association for Animals, Horticultural & Equine Practitioners

The Register sets strict education and training standards to protect public safety and maintain professional ethics, requiring applicants to hold recognised qualifications, see Standards in Education and Training.

In specific circumstances, the Register will consider applications for membership from practitioners who have well-established and proven practices. Where they do not have animal, equine or horticultural related qualifications, or have other qualifications that are not recognised by the register. In such cases, applicants must successfully satisfy the conditions defined by this Certificate of Proficiency process.

All applicants for the Certificate of Proficiency will be assessed on a case-by-case basis and either accepted or rejected. In the case of rejections applicants will be advised of the reasons for such decisions and provided with the opportunity to address and resubmit.

Requirements for a Certificate of Proficiency

To be awarded a Certificate of Proficiency, applicants will need to prove a demonstrable minimum of five years of continuous practice, as well as providing the following:

1. Copies of all professional qualifications supporting the registered practice indicated in their application (non-Equine, Animal or Horticulture/Nature-based specific), i.e. therapeutic, counselling or psychotherapy;
2. Details of any memberships of related professional bodies;
3. In line with the Registration Policy provide copies of appropriate Allied Health Care qualifications if Equine Facilitated (or Assisted) Occupational Therapy role is applied for, as well as proof of existing membership of Health and Social Care Professionals Council (HCPC).
4. Transcript and or detail of previous any (Equine Assisted Services, Animal or Horticultural/Nature-based) related learning of all professional qualifications supporting the applied for practice;
5. Two reference clients (who can be approached directly by the Register);
6. One professional referee who has worked alongside you, or engaged (or witnessed) your work, who will commit in writing to the quality and effectiveness of your applied for practice;
7. Three written case-studies* of between 1500 and 2000 words (one client per case study):
   o For Equine Assisted Services applications (including Counselling and Psychotherapy sessions) no less than four sessions per case study
   o For other Animal Assisted or Horticultural applications no less than 3 months of regular provision

All submitted case studies must have been undertaken and completed within the 12 months prior to the date of application.

Successful applicants will still need to comply with the general commitments and conditions of registration.

Written Case Study Outline

Case studies do not need to detail every element of every session. However, they should provide answers to the following questions:

• What did your client want help/support with? (it is appreciated that in some cases objectives are not always well defined for some client groups)
• If there was no specified objective, what did you do?
• On a session-by-session basis, what did you do to develop/support/help them with that objective?
• What did they learn in each session from the interaction and/or from your facilitation?
• What was the transferable nature of that learning? i.e. how did it tie into a real-life challenge or experience?
• What did you give them to think about/practice between sessions, and how did that work for them?
• Over the whole series of sessions for that client, what was there overall learning? What changed for them “in life” as a result of it? What specific skills did they take-away? (Ideally, you will include “quotes” or “feedback” from them).
• What challenges did you encounter with the client and/or the process? How did you resolve those things?
• What did you learn “about yourself and/or your practice” from this case study?