Kristen Belza: outdoor recreational therapy for dementia

In honour of March being Social Work Month, we wanted to share the amazing and diverse placement experiences of some of our Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) and Master of Social Work (MSW) students, in order to highlight the fact that social work is an incredibly wide-ranging field that extends into all areas of the community.

Meet Kristen, a BSW student currently completing her placement at Green Care Farms in Milton.

Here's what she had to say about her experience at her placement, studying at Renison's School of Social Work, and the broader field of social work.

Growing up, seeing my mom as a social worker is what first got me interested in the field. She has worked with Ontario Health atHome for many years and I aspired to follow in her footsteps. I completed my undergraduate degree at Renison as part of the SDS program back in April of 2023. At that time, I wanted to explore the various disciplines related to social work including psychology and sociology. At the end, I was sure that I wanted to proceed with my BSW, and got into the program at Renison in the winter of 2024. Since the program was offered part-time and blended, I was able to both work and attend school. I am now one semester away from completing my degree.

During the spring and summer months, my job is to help with the program itself. To provide a short description, Green Care Farms facilitates an outdoor day program for older adults living with dementia. Every Monday from May until October I am at Andrews Farm in Milton, helping participants with activities such as planting, weeding, watering, and harvesting. They may require accommodations such as physical assistance, cueing with eating, or redirection. It was so rewarding being able to enjoy the outdoors and pick strawberries, beans, and tomatoes with the members. During the fall and winter, I assist with some of the business-related tasks, including creating social media posts, developing the brand, and facilitating client outreach. It has been a lot of cold emailing and cold calling to schedule presentations for larger organizations. Essentially whatever task needs to be done, I am the one to help with it. I have loved being able to learn more about Canva, Google Sheets, and other programs I would not have had exposure to in a different placement setting. 

I think my studies have been able to provide a foundation for what I am doing in my placement. Each week I complete a learning journal, detailing what I have learned in my classes and how that relates to what I have experienced in my placement. Being able to make these connections have solidified my learning as I now have real world examples of the theories and concepts that have been taught. One class in particular had a module that focused on dementia and delirium, which I was able to write an essay on and show my placement supervisor how both experiences relate to one another. 

My placement will prepare me for my career in Social Work as I wanted to work with older adults to begin with. Having first-hand experience with older adults living with dementia opened up another possibility for my career, which is focusing on dementia in particular. Even if I do not follow with that specific path, it has given me a new appreciation and perspective of the disease and how it impacts each person and family in different ways. Not everyone has the chance to work so closely with the population that the organization services, so I am very thankful for this opportunity.

The most surprising thing about my placement has been learning about the research behind it. As Green Care Farms is the first care farm in Canada for people with dementia, I now think about why there are not more. The benefits from the recreational therapy I have seen should be talked about more, which is what we are trying to do. Through the education of others, Green Care Farms hopes to inspire others to start their own care farms, to make this sort of program accessible to all. I think about my own grandparents, and how when they get older I would love for an outdoor day program to be available to them. It is often surprising to see some of the reactions that follow the explanation about what my placement is, because those working at indoor day programs tend to point out the possible dangers, including falls or trips. The reality is that the benefits highly outweigh these risks.

I think one of the biggest misconceptions that people have about Social Workers is about the work that we do. The majority of people would assume that this field is only about working with children or something relating to children’s aid. Social Work is a much larger field than that, encompassing people of all ages, races, backgrounds, and identities.

The advice that I would give to someone who is considering studying Social Work is to go into it with an open mind. My placement has broadened my thinking, because it combines both business and social work. If you see a need, there is the option for you to combine both domains and fill that need yourself. My placement supervisor went to Renison as well and came out of it realizing that older adults with dementia needed something more than what was being offered. She took her social work skills and combined them with business skills, to provide a program that did not exist. I hope to use that example in my own work and future, and I hope others are encouraged to do the same.

Want to learn more about social work? Check out Renison's School of Social Work, and stay tuned for more student features coming soon!