Our Story - The Beginnings

Animal Days Out (ADO) was setup as a Community Interest Company (C.I.C.) in 2011, with the aim to provide interactive, therapeutic, educational and recreational opportunities for children, young people and adults with a wide theme of animals, wildlife, nature and outdoor activities-adventure. We successfully developed a wide range of programmes incorporating these themes and were able to deliver them to a wide demographic of people. ADO was a small company with big ideas.

In the very beginning we provided interactive animal encounters, animal experience days and remote mobile outreach services to the community, including park events, care homes, scouts, brownies, specialist day centres and many community organisations. We also ran a number of after school clubs and holiday clubs (half-terms and holidays) for children aged 6 to 14 years, along with an Ofsted Registered Forest School Preschool, which achieved its 'Outstanding' grade in its first inspection. It was these very early days of ADO that set the tone and sowed the seed for future years' growth into the services we now deliver. 

Streamlining Services

With the success of our early offers, in 2018 we adjusted our business model to concentrate purely on educational and therapeutic services, which included us re-branding ourselves as ADO Services C.I.C . The name, Animal Days Out was not repesenting our current services and was gradually replaced with ADO Services as the headline brand.

2018 was the beginning of our alternative provision service. It started with one challenging young person and has now grown to where we are today. We quickly recognised that a holistic approach to education and therapy was the perfect model for our alternative provision. To this day our focus, aims and objectives sit very squarely in the Education and Therapeutic sectors. 2018 was the beginning of our Alternative Provision service. We quickly recognised that a holistic approach to education and therapy was the perfect model for this service. 2022 was a massive year for ADO Services, as we became a Registered Independent Special School named ADO River Valley (which falls under the ADO Services umbrella)- and this replaced our Alternative Provision. 

Growth

In order to become a registered school, we had to split our companies in two. With this in mind, we kept ADO Services C.I.C, and officially launched ADO Therapy, which is our Private Healthcare Company. Although we have been offering a wide variety of therapeutic services for many years, it was time to establish ADO Therapy in its own right.

 Reflection

After years of evolution, we are thrilled to be in a position to offer solid, sustainable and tangible services that work holistically, to benefit people within our community. 

Our Future

ADO Therapy are in the process of expanding our 'Online Therapy' services. We are already equipped to deliver remote Psychotherapy via virtual video calls, and we can provide distance support for service users who may be unable to leave their homes by sending photographs/ videos of the animals, or of our therapeutic space. In addition we can also hold informal video calls with them until they are ready to visit our setting. For more information whilst we work on broadening our online offer, please do contact our supportive office team who will be happy help.