CEO and founder, Dr Hannah Burgon and Chair of Trustees, Sarah Urwin very proud to meet the Princess Royal at a prestigious event held at The Worshipful Company of Saddlers Hall in London on 13th March 2023. Sirona was invited to attend the event to celebrate the first anniversary of the Human and Equine Interaction Register (HEIR), which the charity has been involved in establishing, along with other key organisations, in order to raise standards and safety in the rapidly growing field of equine-assisted therapy and learning.
Dr Hannah Burgon, together with psychotherapist Sarah Urwin who attended said, “we were incredibly honoured to be invited to this event and meet HRH Princess Anne where she asked about our work at Sirona Therapeutic Horsemanship. The event enabled Sirona to extend our reach to other professionals and meet key personnel and organisations involved in this lifechanging work with horses.”
The newly formed HEIR register which the event was celebrating now has 56 members registered during its first year. It is helping set standards in the field in order to provide confidence to referrers and people attending equine-assisted provision. It is hoped that this will be the first step towards regulation of the field, and that insurers will start to demand that providers have HEIR membership. Along with HEIR membership, Sirona is also a member of HETI (Horses in Education and Therapy International) holds a 5-star Local Authority Animal Licence, British Horse Society approval and is a registered Alternative Provider for both Torbay Council and Devon County Council.
The World Horse Welfare Annual Conference 2022 took place on Thursday 10th November at the Royal Geographical Society in London. The event was attended amongst others by HRH The Princess Royal and also livestreamed on YouTube across the world.
In his sponsors opening address trustee of The Sir Peter O’Sullevan Charitable Trust Nigel Payne, MBE, shared a story with the audience about his recent visit to Sirona and how a participant’s relationship with Toro helped them to pass an exam. You can watch and listen to his story by clicking on the image below.
The theme of the conference this year was ‘When does use become abuse?’ At Sirona we are committed to the welfare of our horses and animals who facilitate our provision and this year we held a public CPD course on the subject – Equine Welfare in Equine-Assisted Interventions: The Sirona Approach. We received very positive feedback from participants of the course and we are running another one on Saturday 23rd September 2023. Further details are available on our events and courses page.