Both organisations will be part of the £1.4m Growing Care Farming Project which will create more opportunities for children and adults to access health, social and specialist educational care services, while experiencing the natural environment in new ways.
Therapeutic activities vary between care farms but typically include looking after livestock and growing crops and plants.
The Growing Care Farming project is part of the Children and Nature Programme being supported by Defra, funded by the Department of Education and managed by Natural England.
New courses
Thrive will provide its training expertise to equip the care farming sector to deliver the project, providing four new courses for care farmers. Two of these will be classroom-based that will be staged around the country and two others will be available online.
Kathryn Rossiter, Thrive’s Chief Executive, said: `We're delighted to have this opportunity to work closely with the care farming sector promoting greater use of nature-based activities that will help many more people.
`The care farming and therapeutic gardening sectors have many similarities and share similar aims, so this represents an exciting project to bring our training expertise to a wider audience of practitioners and professionals.’