Green Care: A Conceptual Framework - Frisk i naturen

2
Introduction
2.1 This conceptual framework
The creation of a conceptual model and theoretical framework for ‘green
care’ is one of the first ‘milestones’ for the working group on the health
benefits of green care within COST Action 866 (Green care in Agriculture).
This report brings together work from many researchers from across
Europe in a published volume under the imprint of COST. It is the result of
over two years of cooperation and deliberation. It puts green care into the
wider context of social and psychological theory and enquiry and provides
a number of different viewpoints from which to look at the field.
The need for a theoretical framework
Green care is an inclusive term for many ‘complex interventions’, such as
care farming, animal-assisted therapy, therapeutic horticulture and others.
What links this diverse set of interventions is their use of nature and the
natural environment as a framework in which to create these approaches.
It is important to remember that green care is an intervention i.e. an active
process that is intended to improve or promote health (physical and mental)
and well-being not purely a passive experience of nature. In other words,
the natural environment is not simply a backdrop for green care and whilst
the health benefits of experiencing nature are increasingly being recognised,
everything that is green is not ‘green care’.
Green care has many different dimensions and elements that address the
varied needs of its diverse client group. For example, two clients receiving
the same approach may benefit in different ways. There is a need, therefore,
to describe the processes involved in order to define the intervention; to
show how the different dimensions and processes are related; and to show
how the different approaches within green care are interconnected and how
they all relate to existing theories and frameworks. This will increase our
understanding of green care as a broad area, and enable us to see it within
the larger context of health and well-being.
A model of green care requires both specificity and generalisability.
Although at first this may sound like a contradiction in terms, both of
11