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HEN-KEEPING – A CRACKING NEW THERAPY FOR OLDER PEOPLEHen-keeping – a cracking new therapy for older people

In the garden of a care home, gingernut ranger hen Ellen has just laid her second egg. Staff and residents of Elmgrove House, in west London, are hoping that their other three hens – Alice, Sylvie and Craven – will follow suit. The four are already proving popular. Resident Ashok Patel, 64, has been pronounced “a natural” with the hens, someone who can coax them back into the henhouse when it is time for bed. “I like the hens, and the hens like me,” he says.

Henpower, a project that brings hens to older people in care settings, has joined with Notting Hill Housing to introduce the hens into two of the housing association’s extra-care sites. The project is supporting some 700 residents, including those with dementia, in more than 20 care homes in north-east England. Henpower’s launch in London last week is its first project outside the region.

Lynn Lewis, director of pathways (care and support) at Notting Hill Housing says: “There’s something incredibly calming and therapeutic about seeing older, vulnerable people interacting with animals.”

Henpower was set up by the charity Equal Arts in 2011 with the aim of using hen-keeping to tackle social isolation, reduce depression and improve people’s wellbeing. Equal Arts’ director, Douglas Hunter, explains how the project began. “We had been working in a care home when a resident with dementia was talking about his girls. It turned out ‘the girls’ were his hens. He missed the routine of caring for them.” So Equal Arts spent £300 on a secondhand hen house and six hens. By the time the hen house needed replacing, four months later, the staff were so convinced of its value they paid for a new one out of their own pockets.

Equal Arts was subsequently given £160,000 from the Big Lottery Fund to test the project in further sites in north-east England. Its success was such that it now has £1m to extend it to other areas. Contracts have already been signed with two sites in Leeds; Brighton and Worthing are also on the cards. Each site is given startup money and six months’ funding from the lottery grant, but has to fundraise to continue the project.

In the north-east, where Henpower is now well established, volunteers known as “hensioners” have been taking hen road shows to schools, community events and to other care settings. The original Henpower site – sheltered housing in Wood Green, Gateshead – was set up four years ago and now has about 25 hens. Wood Green hensioner Alan Richards, a retired taxi driver, was recently awarded the prime minister’s Point of Light award for his volunteering with the scheme.

Henpower comes over as light-hearted and quirky – and Equal Arts clearly encourages this with its copious hen- and egg-related punning – there’s “hensioners”, “henthusiasm”, “getting the day off to a cracking start”, and the word “henpower” itself. But the intent behind it is serious. A 12-month study of the project by Northumbria University in 2012-13 found that Henpower is improving the health and wellbeing of older people, and reducing depression, loneliness and the need for antipsychotic medication in care homes.

Glenda Cook, professor of nursing at Northumbria University, was the lead researcher on the Henpower evaluation. “Henpower is innovative because it is not just brief ‘petting’ of the hens, but also taking responsibility for them. There’s a huge range of roles with shared responsibilities, with diverse ways to interact with the project,” she says.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/28/hen-keeping-therapy-older-people