CANIS THERAPY AS AN INNOVATIVE DIRECTION OF SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL REHABILITATION

• Оксана Кравченко

  Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University

The article summarizes the foreign and domestic experience gained in the implementation of the method of canis therapy with children and youth with special educational needs. It is proposed to define the rehabilitation of children with special educational needs (SEN) through canis therapy - as a process and system of psychological, pedagogical measures aimed at restoring and developing alternative physical or mental functions, elimination, and full compensation for life limitations caused by health disorders indirectly through interaction with the dog, thus expanding the communicative field of interaction with the outside world.

This system of measures, which includes social, psychological and preventive component and focuses on adaptive and rehabilitation work with children with SEN.

There are several principles of organization of canis therapy as a means of social and psychological rehabilitation in the educational institution and in working with the child’s family. They are the principle of partnership, the principle of diversity of efforts, the principle of unity of psychosocial and biological methods of influence. The child’s cooperation with the dog performs a number of functions: motivating, communicative, relaxing, educational, cognitive, cognitive-auxiliary, psychotherapeutic, resource.

The method of canis therapy, given its interactive content, helps to establish and build subject-subject relationships, where the child with SEN becomes an active and full participant in interaction and communication. In canis therapy classes there is an educational impact through learning: social behavior (it occurs in the process of interaction with other children or adults, and in the process of interaction with the dog, as it is important to understand the consequences of their actions, learn the basics of safe behavior); understanding of emotional state (the ability to track it, coordinate actions, to express it in a socially acceptable way); understanding the emotional state of others (both humans and animals).

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