‘Everyone Has a Right to Be Needed’: Inclusion and Participation in Horse-Related Activities for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities

Daily activities for persons with intellectual disabilities

The Swedish Act Concerning Support and Services for Certain Functional Impairments (LSS Act, SFS 1993:387) provided a significant shift in support for persons with intellectual disabilities (Ineland, Molin and Sauer 2019). Persons with intellectual disabilities form the largest of the three defined groups of individuals who are granted support by the LSS Act (SFS 1993:387). The most common support granted by this Act is daily activity (National Board of Health and Welfare 2024). The requirement is that one is of working age but not regularly employed or in education (1§ SFS 1993:387). There is a huge variety of daily activities offered, either by the municipalities or by other approved providers. The intention of the legislation is that the offered activities are regarded as meaningful and adapted to each person’s specific conditions and circumstances. Some activities resemble paid employment more than others, such as contract manufacturing or working in cafés or as janitors. Other activities are more creative, such as working with media, music, theatre, etc. For individuals with severe intellectual and multiple disabilities, there are daily activities aimed primarily at sensory stimulation (National Board of Health and Welfare 2008).

In the overall ambition to understand participation, inclusion, and/or self-determination in the everyday lives of persons with intellectual disabilities in a Swedish context, the arena of daily activity has been part of a number of studies over the last few decades. For example, Byhlin and Käcker (2018) followed young adults with intellectual disability through the application process and during their first year in daily activity/sheltered employment. Larsson (2021) investigated staff approaches and staffs’ working methods within group homes and daily activity services in relation to self-determination for individuals with intellectual disability. Svanelöv et al. (2019) explored participation in daily activity services from the users’ perspective and framed it within a social pedagogical theoretical understanding, finding that daily activity services can be understood both as social interaction and performing tasks. Umb Carlsson and Adolfsson (2018) investigated Quality of Life for persons with intellectual disability. As shown in the focus groups of this study, daily activity may contribute to wellbeing as an adult and social adult status if control of life, personal safety, and social belonging are at hand. The findings of Luthra, Tideman and Staland-Nyman (2025) show that participants’ experiences of self-determination in daily activities vary and they emphasise the necessity of choice in relation to meaningful activities and occupation.

Daily activities are often talked about as work, and the support is aimed at people in working age. Tøssebro and Olsen (2020) have, from their own previous studies, described, analysed, and discussed the employment opportunities for persons with intellectual disabilities—ranging from open labour market to none, with supported employment, sheltered workshops, and daily activity centres in between. The possibilities for choice are scarce (ibid.). Kauppila, Lappalainen and Mietola (2021) show in their study how students with intellectual disability within a vocational education and training program are governed towards a future within sheltered workshops and living in group homes—though internalising an idea of independence and employability. Even though our focus is on a specific type of daily activity, this notion of being expected to work and at the same time being framed within a disability context is very much applicable to daily activities at establishments with horses.

Daily activities at establishments with horses

Horses are important in the lives of many Swedes. According to figures from the Swedish Equestrian Federation (2021a), every week, about one million people are engaged in some way in activities related to horses. Approximately 4,000 individuals with disabilities, of which the largest group is persons with intellectual or cognitive disabilities, are involved in horse-related activities through the federation. Activities aimed at persons with disabilities are offered at about half of all the riding schools in Sweden (Swedish Equestrian Federation 2021b).

Another rational for focusing on horses is the increasing interest in the role of the horse in human health (Silfverberg and Lerner 2020). Within the research field of interventions and therapy using horses, much effort has been put into developing a range of taxonomies and corresponding concepts (IAHAIO 2018). In the Able to Ride research project, we decided to use the umbrella term horse-related activities to cover all kinds of social activities related to, or including, horses—ranging from body-to-body interactions with horses (such as riding and grooming) to activities related to their everyday care, such as mucking out stables and other more general farm work. Some previous studies on offers resembling daily activities have used concepts linked to green care (Sempik, Hines and Willcock 2010). Sempik, Hines and Willcock (2010) divided green care into six subtypes, including ‘animal-assisted interventions’. We find the subtype ‘care farming’ to be the one most closely connected to the findings presented in our study, although it focuses on a wider range of activities, not favouring the interaction with the animals but including all the activities necessary for their maintenance. Furthermore, according to Rotheram, McGarrol and Watkins (2017), care farming is often aimed at persons with intellectual or cognitive disabilities. Farm-based daily activities have previously been studied by Niemi (2010) and Höglund (2020). In Höglund’s (2020) study, the animals are described as a resource that contributes to the social dynamics. According to Höglund, an important success factor is that the animals are seen as undemanding and non-judgemental in relation to the participants. In the study conducted by Niemi (2010), the focus is on the role of nature, farming, and gardening when working with the social dimensions for persons with intellectual disabilities. At the same time, nature-based activities can be seen as a way of learning a trade and an opportunity to work. Niemi foregrounds the flexible use of nature-based activities and argues for the recognition of animal- and nature-based activities in social work. Daily activities involving nature and/or animals are not uncommon in Sweden, and their popularity seems to be increasing (Höglund 2020; Niemi 2010).

In recent years, the intersection of disability and animality has become of interest (Jenkins, Struthers Montford, and Taylor 2020; Taylor 2017), recognising the challenges of the normative conception of abilities and raising ethical awareness.

Meaningful work—caring for horses adds meaning to the work

Daily activities are not to be regarded as paid employment in a formal sense, but to the persons attending, it is seen as work. At both establishments, the day commences with the morning gathering. At Little Farm, the chores for the different participants are displayed in pictures and ‘easy-to-read text’ in a chart on the wall of the stable. This chart functions as a general frame for an ordinary week, explaining who will be doing what on a specific day. Adjustments might be made at the morning gathering before going out into the stable, depending on who is attending (staff as well as participants). Before going out to the stable, the staff member who is responsible for the daily activities in the stable summarises who will be doing what that specific day. The same procedure of summarising and informing people about the day during a morning gathering is followed at Big Riding Centre.

The morning gathering helps to frame the activities as work. This is the word that both staff and participants use in both settings. An example from Big Riding Centre, from the fieldnotes, is:

Alexandra, one of the participants, seems to think that there is too much talk instead of work. She asks if it isn’t time to go downstairs and get to work. ‘Yes’, says Rebecca, ‘it is—good that you tell us’.

One of the participants at Little Farm is Olivia. She gives the impression of being happy to be working at the stable. At the end of the morning gathering, before going out into the stable, she concludes with a positive and quite loud: ‘Time to work’, leaving no doubt that she and her companions see the daily activities at the stable as their job.

At Big Riding Centre, they have agreed to change the label of daily activities to ‘adjusted workplace’. Since daily activity is supported within the legislation, this new phrase is only used in their own communication, but it is still a significant stance. This process of relabelling started as a discussion between one of the participants and one of the coaches. Together, in the afternoons, they wrote a proposition to the board of the centre and now everyone is trying to change how they talk about the daily activities. It is still a form of support, they still do not receive a salary or vacation—but using the term ‘adjusted workplace’ signals that the activities are ‘real work’ and promotes equality.

The horses play an important role in framing the activities, not only as work, but as meaningful work. In the interactions during daily activities, the horses’ different needs can be understood as imperative for actions/activities and sometimes we see examples of how the horses are anthropomorphised while the staff emphasise the horses’ needs. From the fieldnotes:

Sara and Nancy [staff] are preparing fodder for the horses by packing bags for the evening and for the morning. Nancy continuously talks about what they are doing and asks Sara what they should do and if she wants to do specific tasks herself or if they should do it together. It sounds like she’s thinking out aloud together with Sara. ‘Who should we start with?’ ‘Whose bag is this?’ There is a list of the horses and what they eat. Nancy points to a name on the list and asks who it is, then she reads the name of the horse and points to the figure after the name. ‘How much should Bilbo get?’ Sara reads the number if it’s just one figure, but when there is a decimal point involved [like ‘2.5’] it seems to be harder to understand. ‘Do you want to pack, or do you want to hold the bag?’ Sara wants to hold, and Nancy does the packing. ‘Can you put it on the scale to measure it?’ Sara hangs the bag on the scale. ‘Now we’ll see if it’s enough.’ ‘Think, Bilbo will be so happy when he gets food in the morning’. (Little Farm, March 2021)

In this example, they continue preparing the bags with hay for the horses. Often, Nancy [staff] adds that a specific horse will be happy with the food they are preparing.

This is a clear example of how emphasising the horses’ needs adds an emotional aspect to the activities. An important aspect of the work is that it is performed due to the necessity of providing care for the horses and other animals; in this case, preparing food. In our interpretation, the interaction resembles the emotional work described by Hochschild (2012) and deep acting by the staff. The interaction around this activity enhances the experience and feeling of being needed, of making a difference to someone. The horses play an important role in this scene, and they function as imperatives for activity and engagement because they need human care to survive and thrive. This means that the work is valued and the individual participant’s contribution is important.

‘The good old farm’

At the beginning of the observations at Little Farm, we reflected upon why so many of the tasks that the participants conducted in their daily activities were performed in ways that could be seen as rather ineffective or ‘not up to date’ in relation to a modern way of keeping farm animals. Although this is not uncommon on farms keeping just a small number of horses, we believe it to be important in this specific context. We started to realise that the interactions benefitted from the nature of the tasks, and that certain tasks could be stretched out to take a fair amount of time while yet being flexible enough so that one person could do them in a hurry, if needed. What is valued is not efficiency but the experience of being needed, being a part of the farm, and performing the important work of caring for the animals. This, perhaps trivial, insight struck one of us while observing Ollie and Elsa [staff], when Ollie was pushing a wheelbarrow containing a number of cans of water so that the two of them could provide water for the goats at Little Farm. Following C. Wright Mills’ (1970) concept of sociological imagination, the sight of the two of them working their way forward with the wheelbarrow along the path led our thoughts to a different time and place—to an idealised picture of ‘the good old farm’. Much later, in an interview with the manager of Little Farm, the interpretation of how Little Farm is built on the idea of ‘the good old farm’ was confirmed:

It’s like that with Little Farm, it’s built as though you were back in the ‘50s or ‘60s, when you had someone working with simple chores on the farm. Even though he [wasn’t as ‘bright’ as most people], he could manage and be capable at some of the chores—and then he had a meaningful working life. (Interview, manager, Little Farm, September 2022)

This interview displays how the idea of ‘the good old farm’ guided their work when organising the daily activities at Little Farm. In other words—to use Goffman’s (1959) metaphor of social life as a theatre—they were staging the idea of inclusion through work at the farm, taking care of the animals. Of course, this idealised picture of ‘the good old farm’ can easily be contested. It might never have been a historical reality. But that does not matter—this idea is staged through Little Farm and the staging works. This is ‘the good old farm’ where everyone is needed, regardless of their ability level.

The staging of inclusion, as we began to call it, is not only dependent on the small scale of the farming. The staging is primarily maintained through the interactions and the roles played by staff members. To speak using Hochschild’s (2012) terms, the staff are engaged in deep acting to make the work of the participants meaningful and valued, and to emphasise the importance of their work. Working together gives the staff opportunities to express appreciation of the work done by participants and also to refer to the appreciation that a specific horse will feel when the stall is clean and food is provided. Deep acting means that this feeling of appreciation is authentic for individual staff members and that the individual participant experiences the same feeling of appreciation and belonging. But is this staging of valorisation and inclusion only possible at the small scale of Little Farm?

The good work in daily activities nested within a modern riding centre

We now shift the focus to Big Riding Centre, a modern facility with more than 40 horses and numerous riders taking different lessons each week. Efficiency is built into the walls of this stable and the establishment is far removed from ‘the good old farm’. Yet, similar to Little Farm, there are also daily activities for persons with intellectual disabilities here. The staff responsible for daily activities are called coaches, to differentiate them from other staff, and they work in the stable side by side with the participants in daily activities. Other regular staff at the stable also work together with the participants in daily activities on a daily basis, but the coaches clearly explained to us that the staff at the stable have no responsibilities in relation to the participants and are instructed not to intervene in any way. This means that the regular staff, daily activity participants, and coaches all interact with one another, and perform their work in the same areas—yet the daily activities are separated or nested within the common space. When analysing the field notes and the interview data, we could see how inclusion can also be understood as being staged here, although under a different label from ‘the good old farm’. Instead of ‘the good old farm’, the coaches talked about how they constantly look for what Rebecca, one of the coaches, calls ‘the good work for us’ (conversation during fieldwork). Defining her understanding of ‘good work’ very much resembles the requirements that enabled the tasks at Little Farm to be manageable and flexible. ‘Good work’ can be performed by the participants regardless of their varied abilities, due to working side by side with coaches and regular staff. Like at Little Farm, the tasks, which consist of different ways of taking care of the horses, are valued as something that needs to be done—it matters to a living being—and therefore, they are considered meaningful. Mucking out the stable is, in our interpretation, one of the best examples of such good work—and in addition, it also allows inclusion to be staged. Also at Big Riding Centre, time and tasks need to be balanced for the staging of inclusion to be trustworthy.

Working side by side and creating flexibility

Something that we identified as a fundamental construction of the everyday activities in the stable at both Little Farm and Big Riding Centre was the tasks that were performed together, by participants and staff, side by side. Staff and participants worked jointly to accomplish tasks where the animals’ needs functioned as the imperative for the activity—thereby enhancing the meaningfulness of these activities. The actions being performed related to the welfare and survival of the animals—the tasks were important to complete because they mattered to the animals. From another perspective, this work could be done in different ways. Depending on which individuals were involved, the work could consume different amounts of time. From our observations, we arrived at the conclusion that balancing and managing the time and tasks were of utmost importance. There were tasks to perform and there was time to be spent. In order to make this equation of time and tasks fit together, the staff sometimes needed to stretch out an activity in time, and on other occasions they had to make it disappear—and in yet another circumstance, they needed to find or invent a new task.

A sub-theme emerging from the analysis is that of staging capability. To explore this theme, we return to Little Farm and look more closely at the daily task of mucking out the stable. One of the participants is Olivia. Apart from intellectual disability, Oliva also has difficulty with keeping her balance and she has a visual impairment. From the fieldnotes:

Elsa [staff] asks Olivia if she wants to muck out. ‘Absolutely yes!’ Olivia answers. Before asking, Elsa had prepared the task for Olivia. They are in the stall where there is the best light so that Olivia can see the manure. Elsa has done most of the mucking out but has saved a section for Olivia. While mucking out, Olivia sings. Elsa asks if she’s doing okay. ‘Absolutely, yes!’ (Fieldnotes, Little Farm, March 2021)

Elsa had prepared things so that Olivia would have the opportunity to complete the job. When Elsa talked about this in an interview afterwards, she said that for her, it is important to provide Olivia with the experience of being the one who gets to finish the job, to be capable and competent in this small task. On another day, there is another staff member working in the stable. Olivia mucks out, but without the same preparations, and she is not the one who completes the job. She is provided with equipment and performs the task, but someone else takes over and finishes the work. While observing this, it is unclear whether Olivia has a different experience of feeling capable, but Elsa’s intention is interesting. Her staging of the situation to make Oliva feel competent is entirely conscious; it involves both verbal interaction and active preparation in the same manner as deep acting (Hochschild 2012).

At Big Riding Centre, there are many stalls to muck out, and there are not only daily activity participants involved in the task; the coaches and the participants work close to each other. It is a similar way of working side by side, sometimes in the same stall, but not always. Coaches and participants get the job done together. During the fieldwork, Rebecca (coach) and Cecilia, one of the participants in daily activities, muck out the same stall. Together, they explained the benefits of working as a team: the opportunity to socialise and talk during the work. Cecilia said that she sometimes gets tired, but she does what she has the strength for. Then Rebecca can finish the job. Rebecca nodded and agreed. ‘It’s important with micro’, Rebecca says. ‘Micro’, Celicia explains, ‘that’s a micro pause’.

Disruptions—restoring the staging

The dramaturgical perspective and the element of staging become even more obvious when there is a disruption in the scene. This field note from Big Riding Centre, April 2021, provides an example. Annie is one of the coaches for daily activities:

Annie stands in the doorway between the stable and the area where they keep the fodder. She says that today the mucking out has already been done. It’s obvious she’s not happy, even though she puts on a cheerful face and is in the process of finding new opportunities. She explains that it is the children who came in early this morning who, together with regular staff, ‘worked like mad’ to get it done. From Annie’s point of view, the children and the staff have stolen the work from the participants in daily activities. This is something that she and her colleagues will be wanting to talk about with the ordinary staff. Now, she and her colleague need to find other chores for today.

What had happened is that, on this particular morning, one of the regular staff in the stable, together with some children on holiday from school, had already completed the task that was intended for the participants in daily activities. Suddenly, there was time for work, but the work had already been done. The two coaches needed to rearrange the scene and find other ‘good work’ for the participants, which they did, and the dramaturgical perspective (Goffman 1959) became even more evident when observing both the backstage discussion between the coaches—also involving the manager of the stable—and the frontstage discussion with the participants. Firstly, the coaches presented some easy-to-grasp tasks, like: ‘Nina and I can clean the mangers—it’s a long time since we did that, and it needs to be done sometimes. We haven’t done that in a long time’ (from fieldnotes, Annie, coach at Big Riding Centre). After a while, one of the coaches, together with the manager of the stable, came up with a completely new task. This was introduced to the participants by Rebecca, who summoned them by saying: ‘we need to have a planning meeting’. She then involved the participants in preparing for this new task, which was about mucking out one of the pens outside. Rebecca presented this as a bit of an experiment for that day, but at the same time she hinted at the possibility that this might be something that could become part of their regular tasks. During the improvised ‘planning meeting’, they tried to work out what they needed to take with them and which other people from the stable they needed to involve—like someone with a tractor putting a container in place for the manure and someone moving the horses to another pen. Thus, the day started out with a problem, but became an opportunity for development. The disruption of the ordinary planned activity, which we regard as the setting of one scene, and the search for and presentation of new tasks, illustrates how the scene can be modified over and over again to fulfil the staging of inclusion by introducing a new kind of ‘good work’.

A small detail from the example above is when Annie and Nina, as an alternative task for the mucking out, started to clean the mangers. This is not considered to be an everyday task at Big Riding Centre. At Little Farm, in contrast, the task of cleaning mangers is framed as important enough to be done every day, together with cleaning the water bowls. On the easy-to-read chart with pictures displayed on the stable wall, this is a task assigned to one of the daily activity participants each day. At both Big Riding Centre and Little Farm, the work tasks are presented to the participants as crucial to the horses’ welfare, but there can be differences in how the work is supposed to be performed.

Another example that is more of an atypical case is an observation at Little Farm one morning when an ordinary staff member was temporarily replaced by a woman who knew the participants from another context—training at the gym. This morning was not like other mornings; suddenly there was dancing and singing in the stable, the usual low sound of the radio in the background was replaced by songs chosen on a cell phone and played louder than usual. The dancing and singing performed by a couple of participants stood out as something quite out of the ordinary. It was as though the script for the scene had been changed. When data stands out as an exception, it is always difficult to know how much attention it should be paid. But the fact that this particular morning was quite special highlights how dependent the interactions are on the social environment. One person, a staff member, could change the scene completely—the tasks were still done, but they were not framed in the usual serious sense of being ‘work’, but rather mixed with something resembling ‘entertainment’ or ‘physical activity’.