Care farms provide health, social and educational care services through supervised, structured programmes of farming-related activities for a wide range of people, including those with learning disabilities, people with Autism Spectrum Disorders, those with a drug history, people on probation, young people at risk and older people, as well as those suffering from the effects of work-related stress or ill-health or mental health issues.
In 2014, Natural England engaged Care Farming UK to undertake a review of the care farming sector in order to better define the full range of services provided. The findings in ‘Care farming: Defining the ‘offer’ in England – NECR155’ identified a significant under-utilisation of existing care farming services and made a number of recommendations for action to encourage further development of the sector. This report presents a follow-on research study that aims to develop an understanding of how care farmers are currently engaging with health and social care commissioners; to discover the key information needed by those commissioners to enable larger scale commissioning of care farming services; and to determine the best means of providing this information at both local and national levels.